


God in an Alcove

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: Vexation of Spirit [16]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Shadow Unit, The Lone Gunmen (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Background Het, But everyone's parents were screwed up, Clones, Everyone is Bisexual, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Frottage, Langly wins fucked up family bingo even in this crowd, Light Angst, M/M, Questionable Lube Choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 18:44:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 82,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21342949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: Langly's cousin isn't his cousin. She's his mutant clone. And neither of them are related to anyone in their family. Our heroes have traced this back to a fertility clinic operating out of Lincoln, but it's been shut down for thirty years, and a surprising number of former employees are dead or missing. No one knows where their records ended up. But, Byers has another idea about where to find more information...In the background, Reid and Villette deal with some lingering personal issues from times past, and the police keep showing up to investigate the greenhouse full of pot some local kids decided to build in the back of the dairy barn on the old Langly farm.(Lost? Try the rest of the series.)
Relationships: Richard "Ringo" Langly/Spencer Reid/Chaz Villette
Series: Vexation of Spirit [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1058681
Comments: 152
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

Reid gazed down at Chaz's face, still pressed against his chest, and watched the realisation settle in, and then the urge to lie, but after a few deep breaths, Chaz seemed to come to a conclusion.  
  
"I'm going to start at the beginning. I'm going to tell you things you already know, before I get to the point. You're part of me, because this is what we've chosen to become. I'm part of you. A certain amount of our thoughts, opinions, and memories belong to us both. But, there are parts we don't share, and frankly you've seen me at my absolute whiniest, if not my worst, and you still not only like me but think well of me, as far as I can tell." Another breath gave Chaz more time to arrange his thoughts. "I said I wasn't in love with you, once. And I'm still not. But, I do love the parts of you that aren't also me."  
  
Reid looked confused and amused. "I know."  
  
"And thank you for not flicking me in the forehead for it."  
  
"Neither of us would've enjoyed that." Reid went back to rubbing the base of Chaz's skull. "When you stopped in the middle of the sentence and pulled back like that, I thought you meant something _else_."  
  
Chaz groaned and covered the side of his face. "After the nightmare I had, I needed to stop and make sure I _didn't_ mean something else. But, I don't. That was someone else, a long time ago."  
  
"I'm sorry I can't love you the way you want to be loved, the way you remember being loved. But, I do love you the same way you love me." Reid tipped his head toward where Langly still slept. "The way he loves Byers, I suspect. But, you know that. I _know _you know that, because I heard you say it to Weaver's nightmare. So, I'm saying it so you know I know it."  
  
"We are both way too tired for you to be structuring sentences like that." Chaz squeezed his fingers between Reid's waist and the floor, trying to warm them. "Fortunately for us both, I am you, so I know what you meant. And it's not for you to be sorry about that. It's not something to be sorry for, for anyone to be sorry for. It's just... I had what I wanted, but there was something else I wanted more, and I couldn't have both. I had my chance, and I gave it up. One of these days, I'll stop looking. I'm happy with what I have, but..."  
  
"It never really goes away. Not even if you do find someone else. You will always question everything about that decision. You will always ask yourself if you could have, _should _have, done something differently." Reid stroked Chaz's hair, fingers stiff as he struggled not to clench his hand.  
  
"She loved me."  
  
Reid picked it up immediately. "Did you love her?"  
  
"I don't know. I'll never know. I _needed _her." Chaz pulled his hand back out from under Reid. That was uncomfortable for both of them, and he was pretty sure his fingers were now _colder_. "I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. And I know I owe you, but you don't want to know. Not _this_."  
  
Reid cleared his throat and waited until Chaz looked up. "I'm going to take your word for it."  
  
"Ouch. I deserved that."  
  
"Yes, you _do_." Reid watched Chaz draw back, seeming to fold in on himself. "Not like that. Come back to me. _Look _at me. You know me better than that."  
  
"No, I got that the first time. You think I deserve better than I gave you. You definitely did. Do. And I'm still sorry." And Chaz could feel it in his bones, the revulsion with himself, the horror at his own actions, the need to get up and physically remove himself from Reid, from the room, maybe to go outside and sit in the snow. But, he didn't move. He couldn't make himself move away from the arm across his shoulders, the fingers in his hair.  
  
"We've been over this. You made a mistake. It was unpleasant for both of us. Now, we don't make that mistake again -- _either _of us. Your intentions were good. Neither of us came to serious harm. It's not something to hold against yourself. I just meant to point out that you'd made that mistake so I wouldn't have to."  
  
Chaz laughed, finally, just a breathy sound that he muffled against Reid's chest. "My purpose in life: to make that mistake before anyone else does."  
  
"I've made my share," Reid admitted, trying not to think too loudly of any of them.  
  
"I know you have." Chaz took a breath and pushed himself up, so he could see Reid's face more clearly. "Listen, I'm assuming someone already told you about the personnel files hack."  
  
"Yes. And I was told it had been dealt with, and that Garcia and Gates were making sure it wouldn't happen again." Reid's face hardened as he looked straight into Chaz's eyes. "What do I not know?"  
  
"You don't know that I helped. You don't know that I personally went to Bollinger to make sure he couldn't do anything with what he'd been sent. I promise you, I did not read the file. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. All I have are things Bollinger said to me." Chaz's lips pulled tight, as he tried to decide if he was going to go through with this. "And I'm asking you, because it seemed like the least rude option."  
  
"Alternately, you could just not ask," Reid pointed out. "That might be the least rude option, given there's a very short list of things you could be asking me about, and I'm probably not talking about any of them."  
  
"Bollinger called you a junky. Said it didn't start in Mexico, but Mexico was proof you'd never recovered, and the Bureau was covering. Stop," Chaz said, as the rage twisted Reid's face. "You're clean. I know you are. _I'd_ have noticed."  
  
"You're right. I am. I'm still not talking about it." Reid stared straight into Chaz's eyes, still furious.  
  
"How long?" Chaz asked, tasting how bad an idea this was as the words slipped off his tongue.  
  
"Long enough that I've stopped counting the days." Reid knew he could get up. He knew Chaz would let him walk out and never bring it up again, but something would be lost between them that neither of them could afford to lose.  
  
"You ever go back?"  
  
"Not by my own choice."  
  
Chaz snorted. "That's a bullshit answer, and you know it."  
  
"Let me rephrase that: are you aware of the number of times I've been variously abducted, restrained, drugged, and tortured? In no way through my own actions, and I recovered quickly, after the first time. I know you know what it's like to spend days tied down, and I don't know if I had it better or worse, but I had--"  
  
"Morphine," Chaz guessed. "I remember the nightmares."  
  
"Dilaudid, not that it matters." Reid paused. "Didn't I just say I wasn't talking about this?"  
  
Chaz shook his head. "We have to talk about this. You know if it happens now--"  
  
"I'll have compromised us both? Yes, I _have _thought of that." Reid finally looked away. "As if I didn't have enough reasons not to, yes, you _are _one of them."  
  
"It's a long way down." Chaz's eyes filled with sadness, with regret, as he thought of his mother. Just another person he'd failed.  
  
Reid looked back in time to catch that lingering grief, before Chaz managed to bury it again. "And I haven't seen the bottom, but I think you have."  
  
"Not personally."  
  
"What was that about bullshit answers?" Reid scoffed, eyebrows raising.  
  
"My mother. That's how I lost my mother." Saying the words was harder than Chaz thought. It wasn't like he hadn't said it before, but saying it to Reid was different. Saying it after the shit he'd been through last night was different. Saying it with the realisation that wasn't an image of himself he'd ever have was devastating, which was odd, because he hated knowing exactly how other people saw him.  
  
Reid reached up and tucked Chaz's hair behind his ear, struggling not to think of what he'd been through with his own mother. "I can't imagine. Are you all right?"  
  
"No. I'm not." Chaz sank down and pressed his face against Reid's chest, glad that Langly had somehow managed to sleep through the conversation, so far. "I'm really not. I didn't start this conversation to pass judgement. Who the fuck am I to judge? I did it because I'm afraid of losing you, and I wanted to make sure I saw it coming. I wanted to make sure I could stop it, this time."  
  
"_That_, I understand." Reid adjusted one of the blankets until it covered Chaz to the shoulders. "I'm not happy we had to have this discussion, and I'm really pretty upset about it, but I understand _completely_. And I don't want to talk about why, but I refer you back to every time Langly's been injured during the course of our relationship. Once is enough, for some things. For others, once is one time too many."  
  
"Yeah," Chaz sniffed wetly. "I really hope there's a washing machine, here, because I'm pretty sure I just dripped snot on your pyjamas, and I'm sure that's not really improving your already damaged opinion of me, tonight. This morning? What the hell time is it?"  
  
"Considering the amount of my own actually infectious bodily fluids that came into this house in my bag, I can't say I'm nearly as disturbed as I should be by this situation. And yes, there's a washer, downstairs, but we're not allowed to use it. Let Langly do it. There's some arcane sequence of adjusting valves so the toilet doesn't explode."  
  
"Okay, I've said and heard some exceptionally fucked up things since I got here, but I'm pretty sure that tops the list. The toilet? How does the plumbing--?" Chaz groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. "Can we just reboot this entire conversation? I kind of want to go back to the part where I'm not crying, I'm still tired, and I'm halfassedly trying to have outrageously good sex with you, so we can both get some sleep."  
  
"The coffee's wearing off," Reid admitted, considering the situation and his options. "I'm honestly relatively upset, right now, but I also have to pee. So, I'm going to go take care of that, and I'll make a decision when I get back." He nudged Chaz to the side. "And none of this is to be taken as a comment on _you_. I didn't want to have that conversation with _anyone_, but I know why it had to happen. And I have had way too much coffee to be lying down for that long. Off. Now. _Five seconds ago_. I'll be right back. I promise."  
  
Chaz rolled back into the space he'd left next to Langly as quickly as he could without waking Langly, and he watched as Reid picked his way around legs and assorted piles of bags and unused bedding to get to the door.  
  
It was morning. It had been morning for long enough that the light pouring through the window was really _obviously _daylight, and not just weak dawn light, and Chaz felt that creeping guilt about the fact he hadn't gotten out of bed, yet. Places to be, people to impress... except there was nothing. He was on leave, at least for a few days. He did need to make that call, though, to get a few more days to put his head back on, after yesterday. And today wasn't shaping up much better, but that was actually _his fault_. He should've waited until they'd gotten out of bed, at least, not that they were technically in bed. But, sleeping on the floor just made it worse, because they were sleeping on the floor for Reid's _back_. Spencer, he decided, not for the first time in the last twenty minutes, had been through more than enough shit in the last two days. And, of course, here he was _making it worse_.  
  
A few more self-recriminations later, the door opened just enough to let Reid back into the room. Chaz watched, almost afraid to breathe, as his evil twin crossed the room. This was it. Spencer would've straightened his head out, and it would be absolutely no touching time. Which, to be fair, was Spencer _most _of the time. He stopped breathing, as Spencer knelt down and stretched out over him.  
  
"It is _freezing _in that bathroom. I'm not taking anything off." Reid tugged at the blankets until he managed to get under them, still poised above Chaz. "But, that's not a no. That's a suggestion we should repeat New Hampshire, with less smoke. I'm angry, but mostly at myself, and I want ... I want _you_. I want to be able to take everything that neither of us should be focusing on right now, and put it all back in the box, so we can get some sleep."  
  
"Spencer?" Chaz waited until he could be sure of what he'd say, because he could feel the compulsion to get maudlin clawing at the space behind his eyes. "Thank you."  
  
"Don't thank me now." Reid leaned down to press a kiss to Chaz's lips, still somewhat warmer than his own. "Thank me in ten minutes."  
  
"We'll be asleep in ten minutes." At least, Chaz hoped so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I not say I was taking six days off this series? Guess who didn't take six days off.


	2. Chapter 2

A low, guttural sound woke Langly, and he knew exactly what it was, he knew how many times he'd wrung almost that exact sound from Reid. The lust hit him first, warmth spreading through him, a tingling down the inside of his thighs, and the jealousy followed right on its heels. Why wasn't he involved in this? Why hadn't they woken him up? Villette shows up in the middle of the damn night and--  
  
Langly slowly became more aware, as he continued to claw his way up from sleep, and he found a warm hand splayed across his belly, stiff in the fingers, tense in the wrist, trying not to wake him but obviously a sign of desire. For _him_. He canted his hips back, curious, and found Reid rock hard and just a few inches behind him, the curve of what was probably Villette's hand just a little lower down.  
  
Another incoherent sound of pleasure, and Reid murmured a few words against the back of Langly's shoulder. "You awake?"  
  
Langly pulled Reid's hand down between his hips. "What do you think?"  
  
"Interested?" Reid asked, as if it weren't completely obvious.  
  
"Uh, _yeah_?" Langly glanced over his shoulder at the pair of feds tangled up in each other, behind him. God, they were hot. And they wanted him, but they waited for him to wake up. It was the kind of weird consideration he was still getting used to. He eased himself back until he fit into the tangle of limbs, just as many hands on him as he had on anyone else. And then it occurred to him what was wrong with this picture. "You're still dressed."  
  
"So are you! It's _freezing_!" Reid retorted, twisting Langly's hair out of his way.  
  
"He hasn't slept yet," Chaz explained, slightly breathless. "He's cold because he's tired."  
  
"I'm _not _tired," Reid protested, cold fingers caressing Langly through the sweatpants between them. "That's the problem."  
  
"Oh, I'll make you tired," Langly promised, as Reid pulled him closer, grinding hard against him.  
  
"There's two of us. We'll win against the coffee," Chaz joked, reaching across Reid to wrap his hand around Langly's hip.  
  
Langly let himself fall into the rhythm the other two set behind him, the heat and the smell of desire rising from under the top of the blanket with every motion. Reid's hands clutched and stroked him, never touching skin, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Langly remembered that was how this had all started. His hips rolled at the memory, and behind him Reid made a barely-audible sound of encouragement. He could feel the tension return to the body pressed against him, the way Reid's thigh trembled as that leg wrapped around his own. The lingering sense of almost, of something left unfinished, hung about them, as it had the night before, but Reid was obviously intent on pushing past it, and Langly absolutely meant to get him there. To get _them _there.  
  
It wouldn't take long, the way Reid shivered and shuddered against him, writhing against his back. Langly knew the sounds that were swallowed from the gasps and choked breaths they left behind. His ass still ached from last night's bad decisions and worse decisions, but he still wanted that raging boner pressed up against his back to be shoved up inside him, instead. Would he regret it later? Yeah. Did he care? _Not really_.  
  
"Tell me," Langly demanded, pinned between Reid's body and hands.  
  
"I want you. Warm, soft. I want you in a real bed, in _your _bed. I want to put my hands, my lips, my tongue on every part of you that you'll let me. I want to touch you. I want to taste you. I want to feel you. I want to kiss you and feel every sound you make echo in my bones. I want to take you inside me, to feel your pulse where we meet. I want you to leave me wet and dripping with the pleasure I give you, inside and out, until you can take no more of it."  
  
Chaz shivered at the reflection of those thoughts, those memories, feeling Reid teetering on the edge, pressed between himself and Langly. It would only take a gentle nudge in the right direction, and Chaz offered a memory of lips and tongue.  
  
Langly could feel Reid's entire body tense, leg winding tighter around his own, hand rougher against his crotch. That choked sound and the slow seconds until Reid drew another breath, still shivering and rutting against him. And then that slow slide down, every breath longer than the last, every motion just a little slower.  
  
"Shh," Chaz breathed, stroking Reid's hair. "Sleep. Everything's all right."  
  
Reid made some incoherent sound of protest, but never opened his eyes.  
  
Langly glanced over his shoulder. "Passed out, didn't he?"  
  
Chaz looked terribly amused as he nodded. "Were you done?"  
  
Langly snorted. "No."  
  
"Help me get him comfortable, and then we can have awake people sex." Chaz twisted around to get one of the pillows they'd left closer to the bed and gently wedged it under Reid's head.  
  
Langly untangled himself from Reid and pressed his own pillow against Reid's chest, watching him curl up around it.  
  
"I love you," he murmured, sounding almost surprised, as he watched Reid smile in his sleep. Brushing a light kiss against Reid's face, Langly climbed over him, pulling up the blankets on the other side.  
  
"He loves you so much I sometimes forget it's not me," Chaz admitted tracing his fingers over Langly's hand.  
  
"Please don't fall in love with me. One fed is weird enough." Langly snorted and blinked. "Has anyone mentioned how completely weird this entire situation is?"  
  
"Yeah, _you _did, right before you fell asleep."  
  
"Good. Because it _is_, and I really don't want to start pretending it's normal." Langly watched Reid sleep for a few seconds more, before he looked over at Chaz. "What was that about awake people sex?"  
  
"How cold are you?" Chaz asked, pulling Langly toward him and away from Reid, so they wouldn't wake him.  
  
"I'm less warm than I'm going to be in five minutes, but I'm not actually _cold_."  
  
"So, pants?"  
  
"Optional." Langly stretched over Chaz to where his own bag was stuffed next to Reid's under the edge of the bed, and after a moment's irritated fumbling around produced a condom. "Warning, we left the lube in the barn, so..."  
  
"How gross is the Vaseline?" Chaz asked, remembering Reid's memory of it, but also remembering that Reid had more issues than a subscription to Newsweek, when it came to unusual textures and vintage substances. "Because I've met twenty-year-old Vaseline, and it's not _that _bad, but, uh... I only had it in much more washable places."  
  
"Still better than hotel lotion," Langly decided, after a moment, "which is just as much of a bitch to get out of shirts. Twenty years, and I'm _still _mad about that."  
  
"Hotel...?"  
  
"You don't want to know." Langly slapped the jar of Vaseline into Chaz's hand. "I don't want to know."  
  
"Giving or getting?" Chaz asked, setting the jar aside as he squirmed out of his sweats.  
  
"Me? Getting. I'm completely spoiled by Reid's incredible ass." Langly shoved his pants down and debated not taking them off, before remembering the disaster with his boxers. The pants got kicked down to the bottom of the blankets. "Besides, I think you like it better this way, anyway."  
  
"Guilty," Chaz admitted, tearing open the condom wrapper. "If I ever end up in the middle of this sandwich, Spencer's the one behind me."  
  
"Speaking of behind," Langly said, gesturing with Vaseline-covered fingers, "how did you end up behind him?"  
  
"In a lot of ways, we're the same person, when we want to be. He's aware of every part of my body and exactly where they are in relation to him, as if they were his own. He _could _be afraid of me, but he'd have to be trying." Chaz pulled Langly to him, careful with the arm stretched back between his legs. "It's why he pushed so hard to have _you _like that, instead of trying to work past it with _me_. It's meaningless, with us. He _trusts _you."  
  
'Meaningless' wasn't quite what he meant, but it was different in ways neither of them would ever have with Langly. Different in ways that made it infinitely easier, but potentially infinitely more humiliating, as all it took was one moment of panic, and out came the secrets they hadn't meant to tell. But, they'd given each other so much, and somehow none of it made either of them step away. But, compared to trying to do it _blind_? He was still sure Spencer was far braver than he was, having become part of the fallout from that questionable decision.  
  
"I'm pretty trusting of both of you." Langly leaned down to kiss Chaz, before moving back to the side, pulling his knees up under him and resting his head on his folded arms. "I love him, obviously, but you've got a big dick and I like it when you shove it up my ass."  
  
Chaz almost swallowed his tongue trying not to laugh as he settled into position behind Langly, rubbing his thumbs along the sides of Langly's spine. "You look a little raw. You sure you want to--"  
  
"I can spend today standing up, if I have to. I'm not going to be thrilled with myself, later, but right now I'm hard enough to pound nails, and I just want to get fucked before today really gets its feet under it and kicks my ass."  
  
"If you're absolutely sure..." Chaz knew exactly why he was baulking and that it was stupid. Langly maybe wanting a haemorrhoid pillow for a couple of days _and being okay with that_ was nowhere near the level of what he'd almost done to Reid, the night before.  
  
Langly glared over his shoulder. "Jesus christ, just put your dick in my ass before you _can't_!"  
  
And that, Chaz could admit, was both the encouragement he needed to override his own better judgement and the actual truth. The longer they waited, the more difficult this was going to get. And so, he stopped waiting.  
  
Langly's back bowed instantly, the muscles in his thighs rippling. "God, yes! Just like that, but more! All the way! God! Fuck! _Yes_!"  
  
"Shh," Chaz purred, working up to a steady pace with a little more grease, his thumbs finally settling where Reid's thumbs belonged. "You don't want to wake Spencer."  
  
Expletives followed, every one of them on a voiceless breath, as Langly rocked his hips back, meeting every thrust. The first followed quickly. He loved to be touched, loved to be filled, and this was all of the above. And any thoughts he had about wearing the same shirt again today vaporised as he spattered the inside of it, where it had slid up. Damn it. He was going to have to warm up another thermal.  
  
But, the thought faded as Villette seemed to take that as further encouragement, finally _really _getting into it. Shorter, harder thrusts; tense, stuttering grinds. Langly clenched tight and arched again, wringing the dick inside him, still demanding more, under his breath. And getting more, just the way he wanted it, exactly the angle he wanted. And some part of him was curious whether that was Reid's memory or Villette skimming his thoughts again, but that was just going to start a fight, so he let it go in favour of getting his ass pounded on the floor of his childhood bedroom by a hot FBI agent. Yeah, that was not on the list of things that had gone through his head, while he lay in that bed jerking off. Maybe it should have. This was way better than anything his teenage lusts had conjured. God it was good. God it was so fucking--  
  
The door swung open and Byers took several seconds to register what he was seeing, the words starting before he considered shutting up. "The sheriff's here about last--" He stared, round-eyed, at Langly's perfectly curved body, fingers pressed against the wall, tense-clenched muscled ass pressed against... He looked up and that was not Dr Reid. His mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to figure out what, exactly, he was going to do, both about having seen this and the police downstairs.  
  
Dripping from places Byers was trying not to look at, Langly finally turned his head to glare up at Byers. "Maybe give me five minutes, B-- _Fitzgerald_! Tell him I'll be down in a bit."  
  
Byers accidentally caught Chaz's eye as he backed out of the room, pulling the door after him. "I'm just going to-- Sorry. I'm really-- I'm-- I'll be downstairs. There's coffee."  
  
"Boner-killer," Langly muttered, before looking up over his shoulder. "Did you--?"  
  
"Right when he opened the door." Chaz nodded slowly, an unflattering look of self-deprecation spreading across his face in the wake of the equally unflattering orangish-red across the top of his cheeks. "I'm, ah... Do you want a shower?"  
  
"Nah. Clean shirt, a fistful of tissues, and my pants. This is what you get if you show up before noon. People might as well get used to it." Langly huffed, slowly easing himself off of Chaz.  
  
"I'm just gonna take a shower real quick, then, so it doesn't look like ... well ... this."  
  
"Yeah," Langly said slowly, drawing out the word. "Everybody who belongs in the house knows, but let's not tip the cops. Small town America and all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Days off? What #)%($@ days off? Here, have some porn.


	3. Chapter 3

Byers was sitting at the kitchen table with the sheriff, coffee pot on an iron trivet between them, when Langly finally limped in, still wearing the same shirt he'd been wearing the last time Byers had seen him, but with pants. And as much as that seemed like something that shouldn't have to be said, the fact that Langly hadn't bothered to change his obviously stained shirt suggested he was in the kind of mood where wearing pants was something to be applauded.  
  
The sheriff followed Byers's look and nodded. "Sheriff Harding, Mr Langly. Didn't realise any of the family was here, today."  
  
"Distant cousin. Not a Langly. _Arroway_." Langly crossed the kitchen to get a cup and stood on Byers's other side to pour coffee for himself. "People tell me I look like Dick, but there's no Langly blood anywhere near me. I'm the other side of Mary's family, you know, Ruth's kid, the dead-people doctor. She's selling me the old farm, which is why I'm out here in the middle of East Buttfuck, Nebraska, in the middle of winter, instead of somewhere the heat works and the plumbing's not going to explode." He looked pleadingly at Byers. "Did you start a fire?"  
  
"Tango's doing it." Byers got up. "Sit down. I'll make eggs."  
  
"His eggs are better," Langly muttered, sliding into Byers's pre-warmed chair. It wasn't even an argument that needed to be had. When it came to breakfast, Frohike should be cooking.  
  
"Who said I'm cooking for you?" Byers shot back, taking half a dozen actual eggs out of the fridge. That was the benefit to being somewhere they only had to worry about Langly being recognised. Grocery shopping got a lot easier and fresh ingredients were plentiful and _actually fresh_. He was pretty sure the eggs were from the neighbours' farm.  
  
The sheriff cleared his throat. "My apologies, Mr Arroway. I did know that -- it was in the report -- but, looking at you... You do look just like that boy I went to high school with, thirty years back." He shook his head. "Not the point. I understand you discovered a marijuana-growing operation on your property? Bit of a surprise to come all this way and find a bunch of kids smoking pot in your new home."  
  
"If they'd been smoking pot in the house -- or even in the barn -- we wouldn't be having this conversation," Langly drawled, glaring over the top of his coffee at Harding. "No, Agent Reid and I were checking out the ... structural stability of the outbuildings, when these three kids come into the barn and start swinging! Eastman's lucky he's not staring down federal charges for assaulting an agent, that he knew was an agent before he took a punch!"  
  
"Structural stability?" Harding nodded slowly. "Gonna have to try that one on my wife."  
  
Langly froze, eyes sharp. "Doesn't matter what we were doing in the barn, as long as it's legal in the state of Nebraska, which it absolutely _is_. It was on private property, that belongs to my company, behind closed doors, in a building that doesn't even _have windows_. And on top of that, Halverson tried to tell us it was _their _barn. If any of their family names have been on the deed, here, it hasn't been in the last hundred and fifty years, because that's how long this land has been in m-- Mary's family! It's my damn barn! It's my damn house! I can do whatever the hell -- and _whoever _the hell -- I want, on my property! And short of Dick Langly rising from the grave and challenging the chain of inheritance, it _is _my property!"  
  
"And I agree with you on all counts." Harding nodded again. "If it's legal and it's on your property, I don't give a two cow farts what you're doing. Which is where we come back to those plants."  
  
Stunned realisation spread across Langly's face as he figured out what the sheriff was implying. Byers shot him a sharp look, and he took it under advisement. "Yeah, let's talk about those plants, and especially let's talk about the expensive-ass greenhouse equipment that used to belong to Wendy Everson."  
  
"Josh Halverson swears the plants aren't theirs and they've never seen them before, and of course his parents think the sun shines out of his ass, so we have to assure the community that our new neighbours didn't just bring a well-funded grow op into the county." Harding said it dismissively, but he watched Langly's face.  
  
"First of all? I wish. I haven't smoked a joint in thirty years, and it's probably better than I remember it being, because the new strains probably don't taste like skunk ass. Secondly? There's no way in hell anyone flew that stuff in two weeks ago. Plants don't grow that fast. Grew up on a farm, remember?" Langly pointed at himself and smiled impolitely. "Third of all, I couldn't grow an air fern if the future of all mankind depended on it, so don't look at me. I'm betting on Eastman. His nose ever start bleeding?"  
  
Harding looked down at his notes and back up at Langly. "Should it have?"  
  
"Hell if I know. He came at Reid, and Reid popped him one right between the eyes. Open hand, like something out of a kung-fu flick. I thought it was funny as hell. Reid's still bent out of shape that he had to sock some kid." Langly shrugged. "Everson, though. Talk to Everson some more about his missing equipment. I bet you'll find some more serial numbers that match up, out there. He was right there when we opened the door on it, too. And-- Shit, Reid filmed it. Not when we first opened the door, but he went full fed and took pictures of everything. Video. Talked his way through the whole thing. Did you get a copy of that, or am I still sitting on it? I'm still sitting on it. It's still on his phone. But, yeah, there's none of our fingerprints out there, because I didn't go in and he was wearing gloves, and so was Everson. I'm just a consultant. I don't touch crime scenes, if I can help it."  
  
"He only touches crime scenes when he's the victim."  
  
Harding turned around to find a tall, thin man rubbing one eye and yawning. "Agent Reid, I presume?"  
  
"Spencer's sleeping." Chaz shook his head. "SSA Chaz Villette, ACTF. Tell me there's coffee left in that pot."  
  
Langly finished his own cup and passed it to Chaz. "One more. You finish it, you make more."  
  
Chaz yawned again, picking up the pot to pour it. "'S fine. Where's the yeast? I'm up. I should make bread."  
  
"Freezer, next to the butter." Langly nodded across the kitchen.  
  
"Thanks. I'm just gonna..." Chaz finally registered the sheriff as law enforcement. "Coffee. I'm here for the coffee. Missed all the fun last night. Didn't get in until _way _after midnight."  
  
"This some kind of federal summer home?" Harding looked up, amused.  
  
"Nah, we used to be--" Chaz pointed to himself and Langly. "We were on a task force together with Spencer. Jurisdictional clusterfuck. We still get together for dinner. Spencer's on holiday. I'm on medical, after that last case. Just flew out to do New Year's, and walked into...? Frank said something about the DEA?"  
  
Langly watched the pieces suddenly go together in Harding's head, and he groaned.  
  
"Reid, Villette, and Arroway? Weren't you the ones who broke that treason case with the Army?"  
  
"Air Force," Langly corrected. "And I really don't like it when people point guns at me, so if we could just never do that again, that'd be great."  
  
"And he picks guns over being repeatedly electrocuted." Chaz snorted and headed deeper into the kitchen, guzzling coffee.  
  
"Yeah, but I don't _remember _that! The after part sucked pretty hard, but not as hard as getting _shot at_." Langly rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Anyway, no, we're not drug runners or something. I've got two FBI agents in my house, which is really not a great setup for founding a new criminal empire in the Cornhole of America. Go for the fingerprints on Everson's generator, I'm still betting they're Eastman's."  
  
The front door slammed, and Mary's voice echoed through the house. "Hey, what the fuck is with all the cops in the yard?"  
  
Langly pointed up the hall behind the sheriff. "Cousin Mary."  
  
She stomped into the kitchen, shedding snow and carrying several bags of groceries. "I know you're into feds, but this is getting a little--" She froze, spotting Chaz, as she swung the groceries onto the table. "... Awkward! Hey, why did nobody tell me he was going to be here?"  
  
"Because they didn't know." Chaz cleared his throat and tried to wipe the flour on his hand on something that wasn't his shirt. "And I didn't know you'd be here, so we're even. Surprise! You should probably come over here while your cousin talks to the sheriff, though. There's something going on about drugs?" He raised his eyebrow at Langly.  
  
"Okay, short version for everyone who wasn't here, last night, three kids from down the road broke into the barn, while I was out there indulging Reid's weird city-boy thing about barns, and they tried to kick our asses, but we won, and then the fire department came, and we all found out what the hell those kids were doing in the barn to the order of an entire greenhouse full of healthy-looking pot plants growing in the storage room. Now, the sheriff and his people are finally here to get a look and to do that thing where they accuse the victims of a crime of being involved in it, to see what happens. You know what happens? Two federal agents. Tada."  
  
Mary started laughing so hard she ended up holding onto the counter for balance. "In Uncle Pete's barn? Can you even--? Good thing he's dead! Growing weed. In Uncle Pete's barn. What the _fuck_?"  
  
Harding looked around the room, slowly realising he was completely out of his depth. The three men buying the house were millionaires, who apparently specialised in urban planning and renovation, according to the oldest partner, and not one of them had called a lawyer, despite probably having several on retainer. That's what millionaires were like, if you believed what you saw on the news. The two federal agents, one of whom had come down for coffee and was now _baking_, were supposedly just spending time with friends, and one of them was apparently in some kind of sexual relationship with one of the millionaires. The one who was some kind of distant cousin to the previous owners of the property, one of whom had just walked in carrying groceries, and was now laughing hysterically at the idea of anyone trying to grow marijuana on her family's farm. These were not the reactions of guilty people. These were also not the reactions of _most _people in this kind of situation. But, then, he supposed, he'd seen that whole Tom West thing on the news. The people who brought down a guy who publicly confessed to treason were probably a little weird anyway.  
  
"Yeah, that's about what I thought. Ol' Pete Langly's probably rolling over in his grave right about now," Harding joked, shaking his head. "Look, I'm just going to need to take some prints for exclusion purposes, so nobody can get up my butt for not checking, when we go over all that stuff we're hauling out of the barn."  
  
"Let me get the dough off my hands, and I'll make a call," Chaz offered. "At least three of us have recent prints on file with the FBI, and I can have digital copies sent that are probably cleaner than anything you'll get trying to do it in the field."  
  
"Jesus, Villette, just bake." Langly shook his head. "I can call Hafs faster than you can wash your hands."  
  
Mary finally caught her breath. "I can have mine sent up from work. Again, probably better than you'll get with ink."  
  
"Where do you work, Ms Langly?" Harding asked. "Your cousin said something about you being a doctor?"  
  
"God damn right I'm a doctor, which is why it's _Dr_ Langly, not _Ms_ Langly," Mary snapped, smiling that extremely concerning smile she and her cousin shared. "But, you can just call me Mary. I'm a forensic pathologist, currently specialising in infections passed between cattle and humans, so I get moved around the state following outbreaks. I'm out of York, right now, but the fingerprints are on file for my CDC security clearance. Which, now that I think about it, means the FBI should have mine, too."  
  
"On it," Langly assured her, holding his phone as if using it to send texts. It was safer than just making things happen without an excuse. "Tell me where you want those sent, and I'll have them there in less than ten minutes."  
  
"I am still going to have to talk to Agent Reid, at some point," Harding warned, after spelling out his email address for Langly.  
  
"You could talk to Agent Reid right now," Reid suggested, from the kitchen doorway, where he stood, still wearing pyjamas with a polar fleece robe and fuzzy slippers. He looked like he'd had even less sleep than he'd gotten. "The yelling woke me up. I figured I should make sure no one had punched my boyfriend, yet. It's the kind of thing that just happens, in certain circumstances." He offered Mary a bleak smile. "And thank you for not taking out your largely understandable frustrations on Chaz, yet. I genuinely appreciate being able to get through my first cup of coffee before anyone's bleeding."  
  
"Somebody catch him!" Chaz barked from the other side of the kitchen, halfway through washing the dough off his hands.  
  
Langly leapt out of his chair, dropping his phone as he stumbled around the table, but Mary's lunge got her there first, and she wedged her shoulder under Reid's, wrapping an arm around his waist. "Hey, good looking. You come here often?"  
  
"I'm okay," Reid breathed, letting Mary lead him to a chair. "I'm really okay."  
  
"He's really slept a total of about fifteen hours in the last week," Langly explained, "and about half an hour of it was just now. So, no, he's not okay. Somebody get him a cup of tea and something to eat."  
  
"You can not sleep or you can not eat, Spencer." Chaz dried his hands and swiped a plate from next to Byers. "You can't not do both."  
  
"You literally handed me a plate of pasta, this morning and watched me eat it," Reid protested, as Chaz brought him a plate of scrambled eggs and a bottle of Tabasco sauce.  
  
"More than eight hours ago. Doesn't count. Especially because you kept first watch, and you're supposed to be sleeping, now. Eat a damn food, Spencer."  
  
Reid smiled dizzily up at Chaz. "You sound like Hafidha."  
  
"Because she's right." Chaz stuck out his tongue and retreated to the far side of the kitchen, where Byers was dishing out the last of the eggs.  
  
"Coffee?" Reid pleaded, palms in his eyes, elbows to either side of the plate.  
  
Chaz winced in sympathy. "Sorry, I drank the last cup and the next pot's not done, yet. Just a couple of minutes."  
  
"Perhaps we should do this later," Harding offered, examining the exhausted-looking agent in the seat next to him.  
  
"I'm okay," Reid said, again, not taking his face out of his hands. "You want to ask about last night. I just want all of this to be over, so I can go back to bed."  
  
"Okay, he's out of his mind to be trying to do this in this condition," Chaz said, covering a mouthful of scrambled eggs with the back of his hand. "And before you start, you need to know that if he starts having flashbacks, I'm putting him back to bed. Dr Langly? Second opinion?"  
  
"I'm a pathologist. _You're_ the psychologist." Mary shrugged and took another look at Reid. "But, yeah, I'll help you carry him."  
  
Reid tensed like he might protest, but just sighed. "Thank you. If I start talking about fire or graves, it has nothing to do with last night. It's just the job. I'm sure you understand."  
  
"It's, ah... a little quieter out here than I guess it is in the city. Cow tipping, dumb drunk kids driving tractors into things. Every once in a while, somebody's house catches fire, 'cause one of the fields went up." Harding admitted, shaking his head. "Most of my job's keeping drunks out of trouble and hundred-year-old family feuds from turning into fistfights. Worst that happened around here was that time somebody's great uncle--"  
  
"The time Elmont Gardner chased his brother around the barn with the wood axe, over that girl they fought about fifty years before, in the middle of the family reunion?" Langly snorted. "Come on. Everybody's heard that one."  
  
"Didn't I hear you're from Kansas? How do you--"  
  
"Family vacations."  
  
Reid took a steadying breath. "Frank, I love you, but go get me a cup of coffee."  
  
"I'll get it as soon as it's done," Chaz offered.  
  
"Is your name Frank?" Reid's voice could've cut glass.  
  
"And that's the sound of me getting coffee for you and food for me, and staying the hell out of this." Langly crossed the kitchen and Reid waited for the sound of his steps to stop.  
  
"What do you need to know?" Reid asked, quietly. "I have a report of the incident that I sent to my people, in case there were inquiries. I have video of the scene from the first time anyone set foot in it, cataloguing everything we found, from the marijuana plants to the stolen hardware to the pornographic magazines tucked behind a bag of fertilizer. I documented everything as we found it, with statements from the witnesses to that discovery. It's your case, but I wanted to make sure we documented everything in situ, in case something happened between then and now."  
  
"Professional opinion: do you think these kids could've done this, or do I have to worry about some kind of drug gangs?"  
  
"My professional opinion on that particular aspect is based on limited experience. The drug trade is not my area of expertise, but I wouldn't underestimate these kids. They're from farm families, so they have some understanding of basic crop tending, and probably repair and construction skills. What we found wouldn't be out of the reach of someone who took shop class." Reid swallowed as the world spun around his head. "My concerns are the stolen equipment and the antagonistic attitudes of Eastman and Halverson. I'm... assuming I have their names right? While teenagers are often antagonistic and territorial, they'll most frequently avoid confrontations with people already in a place before their arrival. Most often, they'll leave and return once the other people have left. Our car was parked in the driveway and the lights were on in the house. There was no way they didn't know someone was on the property, although perhaps not in the barn. But, upon finding people in the barn, they didn't make any attempt to leave or to sneak past us. Instead, they accused us of trespassing. Frank introduced himself as the property owner, and I introduced myself as an FBI agent, at which point Eastman elected to attempt to gut-punch me."  
  
"Attempted. I hear you punched him in the face." Harding sounded like he almost approved.  
  
"Open hand." Reid finally moved an arm to demonstrate, thrusting it across the table with his hand bent back and his fingers folded. "To the forehead. I was trying not to break his nose, but I really didn't want to get punched. There were three of them, and they didn't need the encouragement that a landed hit would provide. I just wanted to make sure I _stopped _him."  
  
"You were afraid if you didn't stop him, the others would jump in. Can't say I blame you, given I know Josh Halverson and his family." Harding nodded and made notes. "I'll want a copy of your report and the video. Mr Arroway, there, has my email. You should know I've already requested a copy of your fingerprints--"  
  
Reid nodded against the hand still pressed to his eye. "To compare to the prints on the evidence. Of course. You'll find my fingerprints in several places in the barn, but none of them in the storage room. Will you be removing the evidence, today? We'd like to finish documenting what needs to be repaired in the barn, and I won't be allowing anyone in, until you tell me you no longer need to preserve the scene." His other hand gripped the edge of the table tightly. "I just need my home not to be a crime scene any more..."  
  
"Okay!" Chaz stepped around the corner of the counter. "That is the end of this interview. He needs to go to sleep, _now_."  
  
"Dr Reid was almost shot in his apartment a few months ago," Byers explained to Harding, remaining on his side of the kitchen.  
  
"No wonder he's not sleeping." Harding looked down at his notes and over to where Agent Villette was carefully helping Agent Reid out of the chair and into his arms, like they'd done this before. "I'll still need fingerprints from you, Mr Fitzgerald, and Mr ... Foxtrot, was it?"  
  
"Foxhall," Langly corrected, pouring a cup of coffee and following Chaz out of the room, concern and exasperation warring for space on his face, as he watched Reid cling to Chaz's shoulders dizzily. "I'll send him in."


	4. Chapter 4

"So, I've got fifteen names," Byers said to the small group sitting around the fire, in the living room, perched in chairs and curled up on the rug. Reid slept on the couch, with his head in Langly's lap. "There are fifteen people still living in Nebraska who fit the parameters of your faces, separately or in combination, and we have to decide what we're going to do about that, because I'm sure that not all of them are clones."  
  
Mary held up a finger. "We steal their garbage. Trash left for public pickup is no longer personal property, and it's full of DNA samples. Lab's gonna wonder what the hell I'm doing, but I'm pretty sure I can pass this off as followup on an old public health crisis. I mean, come on, we're clones and nobody knew. I think that counts."  
  
"Do you know how difficult it is to steal garbage in a residential neighbourhood, without somebody coming up and saying something about it?" Chaz looked up from where he lay on the floor.  
  
"That's why we do it at night." Mary shrugged.  
  
"You've been watching too much television." Chaz stretched until his shoulders popped.  
  
"Then what's your bright idea, Special Agent Super Genius?"  
  
"Okay, wait," Langly cut in from the couch. "He's thinking like we're in the suburbs, and for certain values of 'city', he's right, there's no way we're getting trash in the 'burbs in this day and age. You're thinking like we're in a medium-sized town, like York -- I don't care if it thinks it's a city, eight thousand people is not a city. We could get away with it, in York. How many of these are actually rural families? Because we're definitely not getting their trash, if they drive what they're not composting to the dump once a week. And if it's compost, it's useless."  
  
"I hate that you're right," Mary groaned, leaning back against the coffee table, which slid across the wood floor, dumping her on her back and slamming into Langly's knees. "I hate this fucking floor even more. Carpets. Wall-to-wall carpets."  
  
Langly took several breaths through his teeth, before he pushed the table forward with his foot, covering Mary's face. "Reid would kill me if I put carpet in. What are we doing with these names?"  
  
"Penny will cover our asses, if we go in straight," Chaz said, debating whether to move closer to the fire. "We're FBI agents, investigating reports of human experimentation without consent, as reported by the victims." He gestured to Mary and Langly. "I mean, it's really ballsy, and the local field office is going to shit enough bricks to build an outhouse, but we're a task force out of Washington on a special investigation. Maybe we just... didn't see the need to bother them with it. And I _can_ get Falkner to give me this case. There's really definitely a case here, and I can make the argument that this was an attempt to manufacture anomalous individuals, since at least one of you is definitely dramatically altering reality with his brain. I am willing to stick my foot in this, and it's as true as it needs to be, with a couple of phone calls."  
  
"Isn't he supposed to be on vacation?" Mary pointed over the table to Reid.  
  
"No, he's just not supposed to be anywhere near the east coast, until this whole thing with Narcisse blows over. So, he's pretty much on loan, if you can scare up the paperwork for another task force that you know they're not going to let me be on, this time, because I'm a _victim_." Langly huffed and shifted position, and Reid made a tiny disconsolate noise and rolled over, burying his face against Langly's hip.  
  
"So, I'll take your place," Byers volunteered, handing his laptop to Mary, as she sat back up. "I pulled addresses and matched them against your last ten years of residences. There's five people you might have run into, because they lived nearby."  
  
Chaz propped himself up to look over her shoulder.  
  
"So, what, we go knock on doors and ask these people if they're clones? I'm sure that's going to go over well." Frohike leaned over to steal the chips and queso Chaz had left behind when he sat up. "Great, you're federal agents. You're still asking for medical information, and people aren't going to like that. People generally don't like it when feds knock on their doors."  
  
"Whether or not we go in with badges, we're going to be asking, eventually." Mary flipped through the names and photos, checking for anyone she recognised. "And that means you should bring me and loop in your lab buddies up at Origenetics. I'd like to do the testing, but I really shouldn't, both from a legal standpoint and because I'm not actually that good at it. The machines do most of the heavy lifting, but you want an actual geneticist to read these, because we're not talking bacterial DNA, here, and probably not just the obvious parts of the human genome that most of us can do in our sleep. Now that we're pretty sure we're edited clones, somebody needs to start looking at the weird shit, and this isn't my kind of weird."  
  
"Or mine," Byers admitted.  
  
"But, you should really bring me because I can put on the 'sad girls in snow' face, and tell the sad, sad story of how I'm just looking for my real family." Mary stuck a finger in her mouth and gagged.  
  
"Then we have to go together." Langly held up his hand against the protests before they could start. "One of us is a nutjob. Two of us is really suggestive."  
  
"You can't just show up at someone's house with the victims," Chaz argued, reaching for the chips and not finding them. He shot a betrayed look at Frohike. "No, no, we tell them we think their parents might have been victims of non-consensual human experimentation at this women's clinic, and we let them know other victims have come forward and offer them controlled access to the other victims -- a support group, maybe, or even just a casual get together to discuss their experiences."  
  
"Some of these people's parents are still going to be alive," Frohike pointed out, gesturing with a cheese-loaded chip. "We should probably go to the parents, directly, and show them the pictures and the twins."  
  
"If you drip that on the damn floor, you're wiping it up!" No sooner were the words out than Langly's face twisted in horror as Mary snickered quietly.  
  
"You sounded exactly like Aunt Helen, for a sec, there."  
  
"Did not. We're not even related to Helen." Langly glared at Frohike. "You drip chili con queso on my floor, and I'll kick your ass, Frohike. I'm serious."  
  
"Says the guy who sweeps the floor under his desk about once every seven years," Frohike scoffed, scooping even more dip onto a chip and getting it into his mouth without losing a drop. "I'm not going to drip it on the floor."  
  
"You know what? My desk? That's poured concrete with a finish you could leave battery acid on, overnight. This floor, this specific floor in this room, right here? This floor has been here since eighteen sixty something. This room is the original house, okay? Don't fuck with the ancestral floor! My mom polished it every Sunday!"  
  
Reid groaned and pulled the blanket up over his head, curling up tighter and almost dumping himself off the couch, before Langly grabbed his legs and pulled him back. A few more incoherent sounds followed, as he fell asleep again.  
  
"Jesus, Dick, don't yell while your boyfriend's trying to sleep." Mary rolled her eyes and passed Byers's laptop to Chaz. "And I love how it's 'we're not related to Helen' and ten seconds later it's 'my mom'."  
  
"You can totally not be related to your mom," Chaz muttered, staring at the data and waiting for it to arrange itself in a way that told him something he didn't already know. "Happens all the time. Just, in most cases, it involves adoption, not test-tube babies." He looked up. "And speaking of adoption, do we have any idea why the hell-- No. Never mind. That's me getting ahead of the facts."  
  
Frohike caught where he'd been going with that. "Because the technology wasn't there, Villette. Not when _he _was born, anyway. Even the Syndicate couldn't do it for another decade or two, and they were ahead of everyone. And I _still _think this is an early Syndicate experiment."  
  
"I'm not a god damn alien, Frohike!" Langly snapped, pressing a hand over Reid's ear.  
  
"They had to start somewhere. We _know _they did human-only experiments as proof of concept, before they started trying to merge the alien DNA." Frohike tipped his head and shrugged. "Just putting it out there."  
  
"I'm sorry, the _what_?" Chaz stared at Frohike. Really, he shouldn't have been surprised. The Anomaly was a real thing. People, including himself, had scary-ass super powers that violated the laws of physics with the strength of belief. But, _aliens_?  
  
"Alien DNA." Langly sighed, tipping his head back over the back of the couch. "So, we use to work with these fibbies who were even weirder than the two of you, for certain values of weird. And our dude had a sister who'd been abducted by aliens -- or at least that's what he remembered from being a kid. I mean, he was right about the aliens, but it was less 'abducted' and more 'his dad gave her to some scientists who cloned her with varying levels of alien DNA worked in, because political reasons involving an actual alien invasion'. Obviously, the invasion didn't actually happen, but it was kind of a close thing for a while there. I think we have those records, again. Did you scan that shit, Byers?"  
  
"Specifically because cloning came up again, yes. It's on the server, but only some of it is OCR'd and indexed. I haven't had the time, with ... everything." Byers gestured at Reid.  
  
"I've been assured that problem won't repeat itself," Chaz assured him, distractedly. "Aliens? Like, little green men from outer space?"  
  
"Grey," Frohike corrected. "They were grey. _Are _grey, probably. God only knows where the hell the rest of them are besides not here causing problems that we've heard about, yet. Of course that might have more to do with the lack of Mulder in our new lives."  
  
"Agent _Spooky_?" Chaz sat up straighter, looking around him. Mulder had been part of the reasoning behind the ACTF, and never knew he'd succeeded, which Chaz continued to attribute to Reyes being a dick. There were a lot of things one could attribute to Reyes being a dick, he'd noticed. "Didn't he, and feel the air quotes here, 'retire' after a nervous breakdown or something?"  
  
"That's what they say. Our deaths probably didn't help much with his delicate condition."  
  
"And by 'delicate condition', we don't mean he was pregnant, although I'd hardly have been surprised after all the shit he went through, like the freaky alien brain tumour or that time he fucking died and got brought back by... well, now that we know _you_, probably the Anomaly, in some form." Langly rolled his eyes and stopped himself from stretching his legs, petting Reid's hair, instead. "Hell, half his cases were probably anomalous and another quarter were aliens, and then there's the one quarter that were just regular people being completely fucked up because why the hell would they not be? Like that one with the... no, that was ours, not his. Huh. Or the-- No, that was ours, too. I'm sure he handled some things that were just jackass kids and/or government assassins. I mean, you're a fibbie, that kind of shit just comes up."  
  
Chaz covered his face with both hands, muttering, "Even at the height of the Imperium..." He took a few long, deep breaths. "Why am I suddenly the normal one in the room?"  
  
"Because Reid's asleep," Langly retorted. "And you're not the normal one, anyway. _Byers _is the normal one. Your uncle is your dad, and you have superpowers. There are zero circumstances where _you're_ the normal one."  
  
"Hey, there's another reason we're not dating!" Mary leaned away from Chaz, looking sideways at him.  
  
"Did you really need another?" Chaz peered at her over the tops of his fingers, voice so acidic he could nearly taste it. "Were you seriously reconsidering the wild monkey sex I'm having with your mutant identical twin?"  
  
"Hey, _she's_ the mutant, not me!" Langly protested. "I'm older!"  
  
"We don't know if you're the original," Frohike pointed out. "So, it's probably safer to assume you're both mutants. Besides, you're the one with the freaky superpowers."  
  
"Superpowers are a disease, not a mutation," Chaz argued. "Possibly a parasite."  
  
Mary moved a few more inches from him. "How contagious are you?"  
  
"I'm probably not, unless we're in a life-threatening situation together. At this point, there's reason to believe I'm not your first exposure, and I'm really unlikely to be the ... it's complicated. I'd be more worried about him than me." Chaz pointed over his shoulder at Langly. "You're probably already genetically predisposed. It runs in families, but inconsistently."  
  
"Chaz?" Mary leaned in and slung an arm around his shoulders, jabbing him in the chest with her other hand. "You're describing a mutation. Genetic predispositon is a mutation, and I know you're not dumb enough to be unaware of that." She paused. "Which means you two really are the X-Men."  
  
"Can I just take this opportunity to wallow in how much I dislike being me, sometimes?" Chaz groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.  
  
"And speaking of mutations, your eyes--"  
  
"Don't." Chaz sat perfectly still, not even his breath enough to disrupt the lines of his body. "I don't know, and I don't want to know. So, no. You can't. And if you do it anyway, don't tell me about it. But, most of us _are _left handed!" He changed the subject suddenly.  
  
Mary looked down at her hands and took them off of Chaz, slowly. "Really. Left..."  
  
"Might be the effects of the long-term increased abuse of left-handed individuals, rather than an actual warning sign, but there's an unusually high percentage of lefties among the anomalous population." Chaz caught Mary's eye. "And yes, I had noticed."  
  
"Okay, you're picking on each other. That's great, but what the hell are we doing about the extra siblings we might not have?"  
  
"Foxtrot's got it," Mary said, pointing at Frohike. "We should see the parents, where we can, and both of us should go along, because they'll talk to us if we're there. We look enough like their kids for it to _mean something_, when Villette starts asking about the clinic."  
  
Langly nodded. "We make a hell of an impact, next to each other."  
  
Chaz sighed. "Consulting Pathologist it is, then. It's a medical thing. I can--"  
  
"Villette, you can make people think _anything_ is normal. What are you worried about?" Langly rolled his eyes.  
  
"_Falkner_? Maybe my own personal sense of investigative ethics? 'Cause let me tell you _that's_ not in the book." Chaz twisted around to look at Langly. "Just because I _can _do it doesn't mean I _should_."  
  
"So, we let Spencer convince them it's normal that you've brought consultants." Mary shrugged and looked back to where Reid still slept with his head in Langly's lap. "He looks innocent and sincere."  
  
"He's also going to kick your ass for that, if you say it to his face," Langly warned.


	5. Chapter 5

Chaz had shut himself in the laundry room, perched on top of the running dryer, to make a call, and as warm as this decision was, it was also loud.  
  
"Where the hell are you?" Falkner asked, and Chaz felt his face slide toward guilt.  
  
"Nebraska. I'm on a farm in Nebraska, and I really need you to call Reyes for me, because if I call Reyes and I'm _right_, there aren't going to be enough pieces left to identify the body."  
  
"Yours or his?" Falkner drawled, and Chaz could hear in her voice that she was probably taking one of those tiny oranges out of the drawer of her desk, to peel it while she listened to him. It was that time of year. "What do you think he's done, this time?"  
  
"As usual, it's less what he's done and more what he didn't do. I can't swear to it, yet, but I think I just walked into... This is going to sound stupid, without context. Let me step back a bit." Chaz took a deep breath and stuck his foot out, bracing himself and the dryer against the wall, so it rattled less. "I'm not naming names, yet. I paid a visit to a friend, out here, who's looking into her family history, and she's made some bizarre discoveries, namely that she's not related to either of her parents, but she is related to her cousin. In fact, they're almost identical twins, except for the part where they're about fifteen years apart and he's not genetically female."  
  
"That doesn't make sense."  
  
"I know. But, she knows _his_ parents used a fertility clinic in Lincoln. We haven't asked her parents yet, because it's awkward as hell. What do you even say? But, the current suspicion is that the clinic was doing some kind of cloning or extreme genetic editing work, and took advantage of the temporary low fertility rate in the rural areas of Nebraska to find parents they could use to carry and raise the experiments." Chaz took a loud breath and held it for a few seconds. "And her cousin is anomalous, but relatively safe. But, he's the older of the two of them, and he came to it late in life. And there are fifteen other people living in the area who might also be related to them, but we haven't checked, yet."  
  
"Aren't you on medical leave for another two days?" Falkner asked, and Chaz swore she was giving him That Look from a thousand miles away.  
  
"And I was going to ask for another week, to get my shit together. Weaver... Weaver is a great deal more dangerous than I credited him with being _to me_. He got some good hits in, on the way down. But, I'm all right. I just need to eat, sleep, and not be around crowds for a few days. I don't think that's going to be a problem in the middle of East Buttfuck, Nebraska, as the locals call it."  
  
"Even if you're working on something that might become a case? Don't lie to me, Chaz."  
  
"The population density really isn't high enough, even if I went down to Omaha... well, okay, going to Omaha would be a mistake, but the nearest thing that thinks it's a city is only eight thousand people. And there's more than enough to eat, and _I'm not the only one cooking_. This is like a spa holiday with a mystery attached. I promise, I'm not going to do more damage, even if I am extremely curious."  
  
"So, this clinic... Why does it matter? People wanted children, and from what you're telling me, they went to the clinic and received donor embryos that grew up into healthy children. There's an entire field that does exactly that. One of them is anomalous. But, only one, that you know of. It doesn't seem like anyone's done anything wrong."  
  
"The oldest clone we're sure of was born in nineteen sixty-eight." Chaz paused to let that sink in. "There wasn't an industry around implanting embryos until the mid-to-late eighties, because they couldn't make it work with frozen tissue, yet. And, for bonus points, everyone who worked for the clinic when it closed in eighty-seven -- around the time legitimate clinics that did that thing started to take off -- is either dead or missing, except for some of the janitorial staff. Something's not right, here."  
  
"You're sure you're not making a mountain, because Weaver got to you?"  
  
"I would say 'when have I ever', but we both know the answer to that isn't as negative as I'd like it to be. So, no. I'm not sure, but Frank and Spencer don't like it either." Chaz cleared his throat. "Yeah, I didn't pick Nebraska for the scenery."  
  
"So, you want me to call Stephen and ask him... what, if he's ever heard of this clinic?" When she put it like that, it sounded almost ridiculous. But, a lot of things Reyes had done sounded ridiculous.  
  
"Short answer? Yep. And I'm going to call Sol, because if anyone knows something, it's going to be one of them." Chaz heard the knock at the door and counted people in the house. That wasn't someone who belonged here. "I have to go. I think the police are back."  
  
"The _police_?"  
  
"Some kids from up the road broke into the barn to grow pot. It's nothing serious, but it's going to be really awkward to explain why I'm taking a call in the laundry closet."  
  
"... Why are you--"  
  
"It's warm."  
  
"Send me what you have on the clinic and I'll see what I can find out."  
  
"Thanks. Really have to go. I'll call you later." Chaz hung up and shoved his phone back into his pocket just as the dryer stopped, giving him an earful of what was going on in the hall.

* * *

"I knew it looking at you, Dick." Sheriff Harding held up a folded printout. "I've got a twenty-one point fingerprint match."  
  
Langly rolled his eyes. "Riiiight, because you matched me to the local missing Dick when even the FBI says there's not a match? It's bullshit, Harding. Nice try, though. Richard Langly is buried in Virginia, and this town remains Dick-less."  
  
"Funny thing." Harding tapped the papers against his palm. "Turns out the FBI's records are all electronic, and good ol' Dick was a real computer nerd, just like you. Our records, though? When they're that old, they're paper. Had a bug about it, so I had the lab in York run your prints against the prints we lifted when Dick ran away from home."  
  
Langly finally started to sweat, looking for a reasonable answer and finding none. "So, they fucked up. Whooptee-doo. I don't know what to tell you. My name is Frank Arroway, and Richard Langly's buried in Arlington. I guess the guy was some kind of national hero, which is not what anybody expected, right?"  
  
Chaz stepped out of the laundry room, a stack of hangers with shirts on them slung over one shoulder. "Sheriff! Do you have any news for us?"  
  
"This man is Richard Langly, and I have proof." Harding held out the printouts to Chaz. "And I think he hacked into the FBI database to change his fingerprints, so you wouldn't find out he faked his death."  
  
Examining the printouts, Chaz considered their options. "Was the comparison done blind, or were the names attached when the lab ran these against each other?"  
  
"Sent it in just like you see there. It's an old missing persons case, so that's the number on it, and it's just fingerprints, so it only took a few hours." Harding hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and stood up a little straighter.  
  
"So, you're telling me anyone in the lab in York could've seen these results." Chaz's glare could've melted steel, as he pinned the sheriff with it. He couldn't fix this the easy way. He couldn't just convince the sheriff the match came back false and have Langly change the records. People had seen this and there were likely paper copies floating around. But, he had to do _something_.  
  
"Yep. Looks like the fancy FBI--"  
  
"He's been in Witness Protection for twenty years, and you just blew his identity, in an incredibly public fashion. You know why we didn't match his fingerprints? Because _we _removed them. When _we _faked his death, to get him out of the line of fire."  
  
"... Oh, _shit_." Harding's eyes rounded. "Wait, isn't Wit Prot the US Marshals? What's the FBI--"  
  
"Witness Protection is what you'd have heard of. We're a lot more thorough than the Marshals. He's been a hidden asset for two decades, and one of those cases _finally _just closed a couple months ago. One of them. Just _one_. Colonel West was a symptom of a much larger problem, and while we've finally removed him and dismantled the operation he headed, there are others still operating that we still haven't broken. And you may have just gotten our key witness killed. For real, this time." Chaz couldn't fix the problem, but he could definitely strongly suggest the sheriff do it.  
  
"Oh, christ. Oh, _crap_." Harding looked a hell of a lot less sure of himself, now. "Okay, it's New Year's Eve. There's a skeleton crew up there. It's not a lot of people at all, and most of them are young, like you, not _our _age. That name's not going to mean shit to them. You have tech people, right? Can you just... make it go away?"  
  
"Paper records," Chaz said, his eyes burning into Harding's soul.  
  
"We have to start somewhere," Langly snapped, arms folded close against his chest as he tried not to throw up. "We make the digital records go away first, and then we'll worry about whether anyone printed them. There'll be a trail. There's always a trail. In a few days, nobody'll remember it happened. The only person who saw it was probably whoever confirmed the match, and unless I recognise that name, we probably don't have to care. Who the hell remembers what happened thirty damn years ago? Well. _Us_... Still."  
  
"Listen, I'm real sorry about this, and I'm gonna help fix it, because it's my fault, but none of this changes the part where you're a real dick, Dick."  
  
Langly recoiled, shoulders squaring as his chin tipped up. "Ex_cuse_ you? I'm a dick? Me? I'm sorry, _who _shoved _whose _head in the toilet three times a week between seventh and tenth grade? Which one of us just endangered a critical national security operation and somebody's life? And _I'm_ a dick?"  
  
Harding shook his head and looked at Chaz. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. Buried with honours as a national hero is really where that story fell apart. I can see him as a critical witness, though. Always did have a way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."  
  
It took far more self-control than Chaz was certain he had until he exerted it not to punch Harding in the nose. "Yeah, except everything he's hailed as a hero for doing, he actually did. It just didn't actually kill him."  
  
"And if I never have to wake up in a body bag full of my own vomit again, I'd be entirely okay with that." Langly jabbed a finger at Harding. "Yeah, in a body bag, okay? I was that close to dead. And for what? The good of people like you, who still have no idea you were almost killed by an engineered bioweapon that was already being released, when we jammed up the delivery and got in the way. I huffed shark virus so you didn't have to, tits-for-brains."  
  
"You hearing this?" Harding looked at Chaz and tipped his head at Langly.  
  
"Sheriff, in my professional opinion, I'm hearing you talking shit to some kid you didn't like in high school. And that's the last impression you have of him, and you expect him to be just the same. Except you're ... what, almost fifty? You know you grew up, but he's always been some teenage troublemaker, in your mind." Chaz shifted his foot out, bracing himself, just in case. "Surprise, he's not seventeen any more, and it's my job to make sure he stays alive. Which you're _really _not helping with, and if this keeps up, I will make sure you have just as much trouble as you're giving me. The two of you can go out in the back and have a pissing contest after we fix the part where you, yes _you_, decided to reopen a case nobody had thought about in twenty years and put my witness, and by extension me, in immediate danger. How long has it been since you submitted the prints?"  
  
"Fine. We will have _that _conversation later, but we _will _have it. There's a reason we all called you 'Dick', _Dick_." Harding returned his attention to Chaz. "Couple hours after I left here. So, it's maybe nine, now... six hours, maybe? Came up here as soon as I got the results, so nobody actually saw that until an hour or two ago, for verification."  
  
"Frank--"  
  
"Already on it." Langly squeezed past Chaz and headed for the laptop he'd left in the living room, not that he needed it, but Harding needed to think he needed it. He'd already started tracking and removing the query and all record of it from the moment Harding had said it happened. That and he really needed to get away from Harding, before this turned into a repeat of that one time he actually tried to not get a swirly and got his ass kicked for taking a swing.  
  
"You do not talk about this to _anyone_." He didn't like doing it, but Chaz pushed the point with Harding. Where was the line? When did he become Weaver? When did he become The Relative? Probably not here and now, but... "We are trying to clean this up quietly, so it doesn't attract any more attention. You don't tell your wife, your kids, your deputies. If you told anyone before you came up here, I need to know about it, and you need to tell them you were _wrong_. Say the lab missed a point of dissimilarity. All it takes is one."  
  
"He can't stay here," Harding warned. "I'm not the only one who's gonna look at him and know. I'm probably not the only one who could find a way to prove it, either."  
  
"We're not staying long. "  
  
"He's buying the house!"  
  
"It's an investment property. He's got a very nice apartment in DC, and no intention of moving, if he can help it," Chaz assured the sheriff.  
  
"You better make sure he goes home. For his _own _good."


	6. Chapter 6

The first thing Reid heard as he and Byers came in through the back door was the squawk of a police radio, from the kitchen. That was not normal. He glanced at Byers, who shrugged, and then pulled off a glove to send a text to Chaz: '_What are we walking into?_'  
  
He handed his phone to Byers and brushed the snow off of both of them, while he waited for an answer. The mudroom wasn't heated, but it was behind the fireplace, so it was a lot warmer than outside. A chance to get feeling back in his face, in case he had to go back out in it. Either way, he pulled the door most of the way closed as quietly as he could.  
  
The phone buzzed against Byers's glove, and they both leaned in to read the message: '_Clear. Fucked up, but clear._'  
  
A few gestures got Byers to ease open the kitchen door, while Reid pressed himself against the wall to get a look at the room before they stepped into it. Chaz sat at the kitchen table, facing him, with Mary looking utterly furious to one side, and ... he suspected that was Harding's back to him. The radio he'd heard sat on the table.  
  
"Come on in. We've almost got this cleared up, and nobody's gotten shot over it," Chaz invited, looking completely disgusted. "Our friendly neighbourhood sheriff decided to run your boyfriend's prints against the ones taken when he skipped town, in ... what eighty-six? eighty-seven?"  
  
Reid's mind skipped the logical end of that thought and produced something else. "What year did the clinic close?"  
  
Byers slipped past him, heading for the rest of the house, once he figured out Langly wasn't in the kitchen.  
  
Mary looked at Reid, eyes widening. "Oh, shit. You don't think..."  
  
"I don't know what to think. We're not going to know, until we figure out how many other people were involved, and whether any of them left Nebraska before he did. Because right now, that looks like exactly the kind of trigger we've been missing." Reid crossed the kitchen, peeling off his other glove, and tossed it in front of Harding. "So, you know. Who did you tell?"  
  
Harding shook his head, ignoring the glove, and totally missing the intent. "Genie just came on, so I told her I was coming up here, but I didn't say why. Everybody knows about the trouble you folks had up here. It's just the lab, down in York, but it's after five on a holiday. There's almost nobody there."  
  
"Frank's handling -- probably handled -- the lab's records, already. There's no request to submit either set of prints to AFIS, so we're _probably _okay." Chaz shook his head, ran his hands through his hair, and took a deep breath. "But, the faster we can get out of here..."  
  
"I'm assuming Frank refuses to leave until he gets what he came for?" The corner of Reid's mouth tipped up as he spoke. "I don't blame him. I'm just as curious, now. Whatever happened... I don't even know whose jurisdiction this is."  
  
"Mine?" Harding suggested.  
  
"Happened in Lincoln and probably violated federal law," Chaz corrected, with a shrug. Then he blinked, pointed at Harding, and raised his eyebrows at Reid.  
  
"But, you might know something," Reid realised, finally sitting down.  
  
"He's about Dick's age and doesn't look a damn thing like us. It's not going to be his parents," Mary pointed out, studying Harding. _Harding _looked more like a Langly than either of them.  
  
"What the hell are you doing in my town?" Harding looked around him. "You're not on vacation at all, are you?"  
  
"Sure we are." Chaz smiled awkwardly and pointed at Reid. "It's not my fault every time he takes a piss he hits a new case."  
  
"It's not like that! I am not that bad!" Reid protested, shooting Chaz a horrified look.  
  
"Come on, when's the last time you had time off and it didn't get cut short by a case?" Chaz watched and waited.  
  
"In June. After Narcisse. I had a whole week off, because my apartment was a crime scene, and--"  
  
"That got cut off two days early because Fitzgerald. Nice try." Chaz looked smug. "And then, in the middle of Fitzgerald, you were supposed to have two days off, and you didn't even have ten hours before we both got sent to York for the serial case with the pigs."  
  
"I had a couple of weeks off when I got shot in the back, at the end of Fitzgerald!"  
  
"And then you came back a week early, because you were sick of sitting on your ass." Chaz paused, tapping the bridge of his nose. "Okay, that wasn't a case, but that also wasn't a vacation, it was medical leave."  
  
"You had a case in York?" Harding asked, looking surprised.  
  
"November." Chaz nodded. "And parts of it are probably even public record."  
  
"It's how we met," Mary volunteered. "I was the consulting pathologist, because that got weird as hell. And now I'm the consulting pathologist again, because this is weird as hell. But, I think weird as hell is par for the course, around here."  
  
"They don't call us the WTF for nothing." Chaz slid down in his chair, stretching.  
  
"But, the point is, you may be able to help us, because you _live here_. You know a lot of the local families." Reid turned the conversation back toward Harding. "You're one of a comparatively small number of children born in rural Nebraska in the sixties. Statistically, there's a slump in there. Your parents' generation likely had families with multiple children regularly. Your own generation... I'm guessing you watched a few family lines die out completely."  
  
"We _thought _we lost the Langlys except for Joe's girl, here, and she's from the other side of the county." Harding shot Mary a disgruntled look. "And you knew, too."  
  
"Hey, I needed a damn security clearance and a DNA test before I found out." Mary whipped her glasses off and rubbed her eye. "And the Langlys are dying out. My dad's the last one living."  
  
"But, you're--"  
  
"Not a Langly. And neither is Dick." Mary put her glasses back on and watched the confusion crawl across Harding's face. "Yeah, that's the face we made. So, when he says he's not a Langly, he's not kidding. He's not genetically related to anyone in the family, except me. It's why we look so much alike."  
  
Harding looked around the table. "What the _hell_? Well, _he's_ not adopted. Everybody's seen the photo of Mrs Helen pregnant that's hanging in Whitley's. I didn't understand, then, why it was such a big deal. Growing up and seeing that board of everybody's mama all big and smiling. They still have that board, you know. It's just bigger, now."  
  
"We think Mrs. Langly -- both Mrs. Langlys -- visited a clinic in Lincoln for help getting pregnant," Reid explained, tactfully.  
  
"We're test-tube babies," Mary clarified. "We just want to know how many of us there are, and maybe who we're really related to."  
  
"We're along for the ride, because we're pretty sure this was non-consensual human experimentation, which is _probably _our jurisdiction." Chaz looked at Reid, who shrugged.  
  
"I can't say that's come up in any cases I've handled, except in the context of murder or attempted murder, which were the far more obvious choices for prosecution, and _absolutely _our jurisdiction, as part of a series of connected murders we'd been invited to investigate. Either way, I don't think anyone's going to mind too much if we establish there's a case, here, before we figure out if it's _our _case."  
  
Chaz cleared his throat. "Fitzgerald."  
  
"Fitzgerald was a multi-agency c--" Reid cleared his throat and glared at Chaz. "I've been spending too much time with you."  
  
"You almost said 'clusterfuck', didn't you?" Mary laughed. "I wasn't sure you knew words like that."  
  
Chaz cracked a lopsided smile. "You should hear the things he says to your cousin."  
  
"Gross!" Mary kicked Chaz under the table and turned back to Harding. "Anyway, you're from here. I'm still from a few towns over. You know the people here way better than I do. Anybody else around here look like me? You hear about anybody going to The Family Way clinic in Lincoln?"  
  
"I think you want to go take a look at the wall at Whitley's. Little Whit's not gonna know shit, but you see if his granddad's got what to tell you about Mrs Helen and those other proud mamas on the wall. And they are all proud. Every one of them. And I always thought it was just one of those women things. I didn't get married, what do I know? But, I hear what you're saying about there not being a lot of us, this generation. And even less with more than one kid in a family, most of them with one parent from somewhere else, if I think about it. Like the Wassermans. They came from the city. The Sjobergs, though, they've been here forever and their mama was a Thorson. Thorsons finally packed up and moved to York, a few years ago. Two sisters, the Sjobergs had, and I remember my mama saying they were blessed. She only had me, but I knew she wanted a daughter, too. Never happened." Harding shook his head and sighed, jaw sliding back and forth like he was chewing on the new information. "I guess it never really sank in, you know? Everybody knew it and nobody talked about it straight on. And then our kids, mostly twenty-something now, there's not so many of them, either, but still more than there were of us. Just never really crossed my mind, as many times as mama said I was her miracle baby, just what that really meant."  
  
He stared into space for a bit, and everyone just let him settle with it. "You know, I can ask some of the young folks if they used that clinic, maybe because their parents did, and recommended it."  
  
"Except it's closed," Mary reminded him. "Shut down in eighty-seven, less than a year after Dick left town."  
  
"And I really don't like that," Reid breathed against folded hands.  
  
"I'm pretty hesitant to write anything off as a coincidence, yet," Chaz admitted. "Waiting for a call from Falkner regarding investigations and rumours Penny wouldn't have been able to get her hands on. If we knew about this when it was still going on, I _will _find out about it."  
  
Harding looked from one agent to the other trying to figure out what they were thinking. "You don't think Dick did something to close the place down, do you? He was a horse's ass, but he really was just a kid, back in eighty-six."  
  
"All I have is a poorly founded theory, at this time, but I don't believe he acted to close down the clinic." Reid chose his words carefully. "If the kind of experimentation we believe the clinic was engaged in was actually happening, though, it's possible his disappearance may have affected the decision to close the clinic at that time. Like I said, it's poorly-founded speculation, and I'm sure further investigation will provide us with more information on what was actually happening, there, and why two of their patients birthed nearly identical children, about fifteen years apart. The technology required for that wasn't publicly available when ... _Frank _was born."  
  
"We were doing something like it with cows!" Harding insisted, catching Reid with a look clearly reserved for dumbass city boys.  
  
"See, that's it, though. Something _like _it. You could do the same with fresh material and human subjects, as well, but they hadn't figured out how to safely freeze and store it for later use. And to be honest, that's the only thing we can think of that would produce the level of similarity in the tests."  
  
"This just sounds more and more like science fiction, the longer you talk." Harding squinted at Reid and then looked over at Mary. "You're the doctor, right? Do you understand what he's trying to say?"  
  
"He's trying to say I'm a ... genetically modified identical twin, and he's probably right. I'm not quite Dick, but you'd have a hell of a time proving it with the quick tests." Mary held up a hand. "I know. I didn't think it was right either. We were sure the lab screwed it up, so we had them run it again. Same result. So, then I took a sample and ran it myself -- and disclaimer time, this is not my speciality -- but I got the same results the lab got, so I ran it a couple more times just to be sure. It's freaky shit, and I'm pretty sure it's not what it said in the clinic's promo booklets, which makes it at _least _malpractice."  
  
"You're serious. All of you. You sure you didn't catch that mad cow disease or something? This is the kind of thing you see on the Sunday Late Movie, not something that really happens..." Harding squinted at Reid, looking for any sign this might be a joke.  
  
"Mad cow disease also sounded like something off the Sunday Sci-Fi Double Feature, until they managed to prove it was happening and had a perfectly demonstrable cause." Reid raised his eyebrows and tipped his head. "Also, this is why it's technically Agent Villette's case. The Anomalous Crimes Task Force handles nothing but cases that sound like episodes of the Twilight Zone, but usually turn out to have perfectly rational explanations." He left out the part where 'perfectly rational' usually involved someone having super powers.  
  
Chaz nodded. "This kind of thing is ... I'd say it's just Tuesday, but Tuesday's tomorrow, and this is the first time I've had anything involving a fertility clinic. But, the innate level of weirdness is about on par with anything else my team has handled in the last decade."  
  
"Dec--" Harding took a much closer look at Chaz. "How the hell old are you?"  
  
"Thirty-six." Chaz looked at Reid. "Seven? Six." He pressed his hands against his face and made a frustrated sound. "What year is it?"  
  
"I just turned thirty-eight," Reid volunteered. "You're thirty-six." He looked at Harding. "Contrary to popular belief, we're not twins."  
  
"Well, good, 'cause you look just about shit alike." Harding blinked at them.  
  
"Do you want to say that again so I can record it and play it back for my team?" Chaz asked. "I work with a bunch of profilers, and you'd think they'd know the difference."  
  
Reid swallowed a laugh. "They usually do. I'm sure Agent Brady just enjoys annoying you, and Duke's... _Duke_... Alvez, though... I make no promises."  
  
"Rossi?" Chaz asked.  
  
"Is trying to get on my last nerve, and I have no intention of allowing this to pass." Reid looked back at Harding. "But, yes. _They're_ the twins, not us."  
  
"And you think this clinic in Lincoln did some messed up mad science to make that happen."  
  
"In small words?" Mary leaned across the table until Harding was looking at her. "Yes."  
  
"But, the clinic's closed now." Harding looked from one agent to the other. "So, there's not really anyone to prosecute, is there?"  
  
"No one who worked at the clinic is still alive, except the janitorial staff," Chaz told him. "So, our interest is mostly just in finding the truth. And if the path gets us there, in finding out who funded this project."  
  
"If it's the DoD, I'm going to the news." Mary threw her hand up. "Just so we're clear on that."  
  
"If it's the DoD, Frank's going to be insufferable." Reid winced at the thought. "And justifiably so."  
  
"Frank? _Fitz_." Chaz rolled his eyes. "But, yeah. We're just ... nothing about this situation looks good, and we'd like to handle it as professionals before some poor average Joe and Jane trip over each other in some horrible DNA matching accident. Or somebody accidentally finds out they're not related to the woman who gave birth to them, while trying to donate a kidney or something."  
  
"Is any of that actually likely?" Harding studied Chaz. "Those are pretty horrible scenarios, but who is that really going to happen to?"  
  
"Commercial DNA testing services are more and more common, and some of them allow a person to opt in to being matched for potential relatives. Any of our..." Mary swallowed before she tried the word. "Any of our _siblings _would show up as siblings, at least. Some of them may show up as identical twins, depending on the level of mutation and the service in question. _That one_ is actually getting more and more likely every day. The other? It's less of an uncommon situation than we'd all like it to be. Organ donation from direct relations remains the most common source for certain kinds of transplants, and while the matching done isn't DNA testing, there are some things that'll come up that _may _suggest the donor and recipient aren't closely related. I want to find out what happened to us, to all of us, before these people find out _by accident_. The clinic was open for more than twenty years, and we may not be the first or last. It's not okay, Harding. None of this is at all okay. It sucks my ass, and I'm not letting it ruin anybody else's life."  
  
"They didn't get the son they deserved, because they got somebody else's son, and you think nobody ever told them." Harding was looking at the table, so he missed the way Reid's spine stiffened.  
  
Chaz reached out and grabbed Reid's hand, squeezing it sharply, holding it gently. Oh, he knew. But, this wasn't a fight they needed to start _now_.  
  
"Yep." Harding nodded and looked up at Mary. "That's a whole lot of not okay. I liked Mrs Helen. Old Pete we all could've done without, but Mrs Helen was a sweet woman, and nobody minded helping her out. _You_ know that. And if somebody did wrong by Mrs Helen, you're right. I'd want to know, too. I _do_ want to know."  
  
"Everybody knows you've been coming up here, because of the greenhouse. If you're asking around, just say I found the name of the clinic in Aunt Helen's stuff in the attic, which is true, and I was wondering if anybody had heard of the place, because it's not there any more," Mary suggested. "That's pretty neutral, right? She's my aunt. I'm selling her house."  
  
"We don't want to scare people when we don't have all the facts," Chaz explained.  
  
Harding nodded again. "No sense in getting everybody riled over something that happened fifty years ago, when we don't even know just what it was, yet. Still, if half of what you say is real, that's gonna make a sound when it hits."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every last one of you nutterbars still following along with this increasingly ridiculous series, I love you all.


	7. Chapter 7

They all sat in the living room, around the fire, Reid and Langly on one side of the sofa, Frohike on the other, Chaz and Byers in the chairs to either side of the fireplace. Mary sat on the corner of the coffee table, next to Chaz's phone, which counted down toward midnight.  
  
"So, absolutely most fucked up end to a year?" Mary gestured to the rest of them with her beer.  
  
"I've had worse." Reid finished his beer and set the empty on the coffee table. Langly handed him another. "I'm not sure I've had _weirder_, though. This is really..."  
  
"A holiday special from the other side of the floor." Chaz wasn't sure if the bottle he held was his second or third, and he also wasn't sure it mattered. "And I'm probably getting called back in, tomorrow, because--"  
  
"It's a holiday, and the holidays often serve as major stressors." Reid nodded and sighed.  
  
"I know you're supposed to make resolutions on New Year's Eve, but I'm just going to make a wish, instead." Chaz laughed tiredly and slid down in his chair. "My wish for next year is fewer serial killers and no New Year's murders."  
  
Reid groaned and tipped his head to rest it against Langly's neck. "Oh, that would be incredible."  
  
"Thirded." Langly raised the bottle he held. "And I'd rather not get shot at, next year, either. I've had enough getting shot at."  
  
"Maybe stop standing in front of people with guns," Frohike teased.  
  
Mary twisted around so she could see her cousin. "Yeah, what the hell, Dick? Everybody here talks about you being a spineless nerd, and now you're out throwing yourself in front of serial killers?"  
  
"Before it was serial killers it was corporate security and rogue government agents," Byers pointed out, finally loosening his tie. "I wouldn't say he's been _bold_, before now, but definitely not spineless."  
  
"And this from the guy who attacked his crazy girlfriend's murderous new boyfriend with nothing but a table lamp and a pair of brass balls." Frohike nodded at Byers and held out his hand across Reid for another beer, which Langly handed him.  
  
"We were going to get killed!" Byers protested.  
  
"Does that make up for the time you almost got us all killed, because you couldn't shut your god damn federally-funded mouth?" Langly huffed and slumped back into the corner of the couch. "Your brass balls, and _I'm_ the one with the lightning."  
  
"Fireworks display!" Mary's face lit up.  
  
"Not in the _house_!" Langly looked horrified.  
  
"Okay, in the _barn_!"  
  
"You know he's going to burn down the barn if he does that, right?" Frohike looked back and forth between the pair of Langlys, still disturbed there were two of them, and they were so much alike.  
  
"He doesn't even like the barn!" Mary waved a hand flippantly.  
  
"I like the barn!" Reid protested.  
  
"Have we even finished paying for the barn?" Langly asked, a moment later, looking past Mary at Byers.  
  
"It's--" Byers started, but Mary cut him off.  
  
"Mom called, while you were picking a fight with the sheriff. You paid _what _for this land? Are you out of your mind?"  
  
Langly blinked, eyes darting from side to side. "Uh, that's a good question, _Byers_, what did we pay for this land?"  
  
"Twice the asking price." Byers cleared his throat and stared into his beer. "You weren't here. Frohike and I saw the house Ruth and Joe are living in. It's a nice house, but it really needs work. I just... I thought we could help. That's what we _do_." He looked up at Mary with an awkward smile. "Merry Christmas?"  
  
"Merry fucking multi-million dollar Christmas?" Mary looked around the room, waiting for someone to tell her this was a joke.  
  
"Well, we _are _philanthropists." Frohike shrugged.  
  
The alarm went off, signalling midnight, and Frohike leaned forward to turn it off.  
  
Reid tipped his chin expectantly at Langly, pushing his beer onto the coffee table and leaving his hand out in invitation to Chaz, who had mostly pulled back into his own head, since the other night. And Reid understood that. Sometimes a person just needs to get themselves together, before they subject anyone else to themselves. He couldn't count how many times he'd done the same, but at least Chaz was still in the room, which was several steps ahead of where _he _usually was at this point. And then Langly's lips were on him, Langly's hands were on him, pulling him closer, but his hand stayed where it was.  
  
Mary leapt off the coffee table, turning to perch on the arm of Byers's chair. He leaned aside and threw his hands up.  
  
"I have a girlfriend!"  
  
"You couldn't tell me that?" Mary snapped at Langly, who stayed thoroughly engaged in his own kiss, merely turning up his middle finger, in response.  
  
Chaz shot Frohike a long-suffering look.  
  
Frohike raised his eyebrows and one hand. "Well, _I'm_ not kissing you."  
  
Chaz finished his drink as he stood, setting the bottle on top of the mantel. As he turned to get another, from the other side of the room, Mary grabbed his hair and pulled him down to her height.  
  
The sensation shot through him like lightning in his bones and butterfly wings under his skin. His knees almost buckled, and he could feel his lips tingle. He wanted this. He wanted this so much.  
  
Putting his hands on her shoulders, he pulled back out of her reach. "No. You're not interested, and I'm not going to-- No."  
  
"It's just a kiss," Mary scoffed.  
  
"And it wouldn't be, for me, so no." It had been a long time since he'd felt this broken, this small. Well, assuming one didn't count the last time they'd been in the same room, in Virginia. He closed his eyes to hide the depth of it. "It's not that I don't want to. It's that we've already established I want much more than you're willing to give, and I'm not going to put myself in a position where I have to pretend I have no feelings. I like you quite a bit. It would be very easy for me to fall in love with you. And neither of us would be happy with that."  
  
Mary finally let go. "You really are easy, aren't you?"  
  
Chaz opened his eyes, as still and blank as his face, now. "_Yes_."  
  
"So, why is it me, and not them, if you're so easy?" Mary didn't move away, and Chaz found himself pinned between her and his chair.  
  
"They have each other. They're hearts and flowers and a honeymoon in the south of France in love with each other. They have a wonderful relationship, and I'm... I'm the friend they sometimes sleep with. I care a great deal for Spencer. I'd move mountains for him. I trust him with my life. But, he's ... he's my evil twin? It's not the same thing at all. He's closer to me than anyone but Hafidha, but best friend, not romance. And I _do _want romance. I want two cats and a white picket fence, I want someone I can cook for, I want someone to come home to, someone I can surprise with flowers, someone to go dancing with. I want someone who's going to laugh when I show up in the middle of the night with a six-pack and Mexican takeout, and not slam the door in my face. I want someone who loves me enough to tell me my puns are horrible, and likes my taste in music enough to steal my records -- with the understanding that I absolutely _will _find out and steal those back."  
  
"Steal your records and not laugh at your jokes?" The corners of Mary's mouth twisted with a suppressed laugh. "Million-Headed Monster."  
  
Chaz pulled her into his arms, stepped and spun away from the fire, mostly to get out of the corner he'd been stuck in for this whole conversation. "I'll show you the world--" Step and turn. "If you'll tell me your name." He dipped her and tried to smile, but he could feel the pooling start under his eyes. "But, less creepy. Way, _way _less creepy."  
  
May laughed as Chaz stood her back up. "Dick's fucking lucky he got to you first, the bastard. And what about him? You'll moon about how it's not like that with Spencer, but what about Dick, hmm?"  
  
Chaz tipped his head back, waiting for his eyes to clear and the smile to get a little more believable. "He's got great legs, and he can go all night." He choked out half a laugh and looked back down at Mary. "It's not that complicated."  
  
"So, it's really not just because I remind you of him..."  
  
"If it was, I'd let you kiss me. Because it wouldn't mean a damn thing to _me_."  
  
"Not even if I promise not to slip you any tongue?" Mary teased.  
  
Langly finally interrupted. "Knock it off or I'll tell you where his mouth was, last night."  
  
Mary blinked, squinted, and recoiled a bit, eyes on her cousin. "Seriously?"  
  
"And he's completely incredible at it, too." Langly looked smug.  
  
Chaz cleared his throat. "I'm not _terrible_. There are things I'm better at. Hand me another beer? I got up for a beer."  
  
Reid held out his own beer. "Kiss me and you can have the rest of mine."  
  
Mary watched the way Chaz moved, without even pausing to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation or the fact that her cousin was holding an unopened beer, stepping over the coffee table and sinking to his knees between Reid's ankles. His hands stayed in his lap as he tipped his head back and leaned forward, murmuring, "Come back to me."  
  
Reid put the beer back on the table and twisted his fingers into Chaz's hair, studying Chaz's eyes for a moment, before he leaned into the kiss, a slow and gentle appreciation of Chaz's thin lips. And Mary still watched, curious at the difference between this and the ravenous kiss Reid had shared with her cousin. This was sweet and warm; it looked far more like comfort than desire, as if the touch of lips could blot away some troubles hidden between them.  
  
"And they're _not _in love?" Mary eyed Langly incredulously.  
  
"Nah. They're ... They're not really the same person, but it's like there's only one and a half of them, not two. You ever wish there were two of you, so you'd have more hands? It's like that. Except, you know, there actually are two of them, so that might be creepy. Except it's not creepy. It's kind of hot." Langly shrugged and offered Mary the beer he was holding. "They're into it. I'm into it."  
  
"You see shit like that in films," Mary said, taking the beer and gesturing at Chaz with it. "That's just fucking unreal. People don't just... get lost like that."  
  
"They're not lost," Langly sighed and stretched his legs. "They're reading each others' minds, again. It's better to just leave them to it. They'll be a minute."  
  
"How many drinks has Dr Reid had, this evening?" Byers asked, from the other side of the room.  
  
Langly counted bottles. "One and a half. He's fine. He knows exactly what he's doing."  
  
Frohike watched the kiss a little longer, looked at the beer he'd just opened, and got up, crossing to the chair Chaz had abandoned. "You three should be on the couch. Mostly so I don't get stuck in the middle of this."  
  
Mary wrapped her shirt around the top of the bottle and twisted it open, tossing the cap into Langly's lap. "I am really starting to envy you."  
  
"Hey, Villette doesn't kiss _me _like that." Langly tore his eyes away from the smouldering lip-lock next to him, to look up at Mary. "And, besides, I told you: you and him is between you and him. I have nothing to do with it, besides the part where you apparently care that I licked it first."  
  
"Hey, Dick?" Mary kicked the coffee table out a little further and sat back down on the corner. "You licked _everything_ first. I grew up trying to be you. I stole your clothes. I got Uncle Pete to give me the computer. But, there's a point where you stopped, where there was no more you to catch up to. And then I meet a nice guy who's not going to be a shit about my weird hours and the security clearance, and he tells me he found you. And there you are again. And then I find out what? You fucking licked it, you asshole!"  
  
Langly shoved her knee with his foot. "Yeah, but we're clones. Does it even matter?"


	8. Chapter 8

Chaz, simply put, looked like shit. The night had not been kind, and his face still bore the worst of it. Even the hours he'd spent tangled up in Reid hadn't settled him, though Spencer had tried so hard to help him through it -- held him, touched him, grounded him. And really, if he could've spent the rest of the day mostly in bed, he'd have been all right. But, he had to get up and pretend to be Mary's boyfriend, in town.  
  
It didn't help that she was looking at him differently, today, as if something had changed in the hours he'd spent doing the psychic equivalent of crying into his coffee. Maybe it was just that they were supposed to look like a happy couple, which Chaz had to admit, he should've been working on before they crossed into the town, proper. But, he was so tired everything hurt. And if he'd felt like being more honest with himself, he'd have admitted those were not cause and effect.  
  
"So, what kind of relationship do we have?" Chaz asked, looking out the window as they drove past the first houses that didn't have acres of farmland between them. "We've got to be in the same ballpark or we're going to get made at a glance."  
  
"Whatever the hell you had going on with Spencer, last night, was _hot_." Mary cracked a wide grin, before she realised Chaz wasn't smiling.  
  
"I won't be repeating that with you, but I can give you something that won't look much different, at a glance." Chaz's shoulder twitched in a half-hearted shrug with a loud pop in the middle. "But, they're going to be talking about us for months, if I do."  
  
"They're going to be talking for months anyway. Trey's a little older than me, but only a little. If he's forty, I'll be surprised. He hit on me one time, and you know what he said to me? He said I should take him up on it because I wasn't going to get any other offers, looking like a man." Mary snorted and rolled her eyes, and Chaz started to laugh.  
  
"You _do _look like a man." He fended off a swat in his direction. "You do! You look like one very specific and particular man who happens to be your _clone_. And maybe seven or eight others who are also probably clones. And the seven or eight _women_ who also look like you and your ... whatever he is."  
  
"He's a pain in my ass is what he is." Mary huffed, parking along the square. "So, what are you worried your performance is going to get us?"  
  
"Here's the thing: I don't care. I get to leave, when this is over. But, you live near enough that these people know you. They knew your family. If you tell me you want me to do it, I'll do it, but I think it might be in your interest to walk in with something a little more traditional than a devoted sub. You already have a reputation, here. Do you really want to add ballbusting shrew to that? Because no matter how you behave toward me, if I go in like that, that's what they're going to see."  
  
Mary turned the car one step past off so the heat kicked back on and turned to look up at Chaz. "Devoted submissive, huh?"  
  
"What? I know what last night _looked like_!" Chaz laughed, a little nervously. "It's nothing like that, but you could only see it from the outside, and if you want something that looks like that, that's how it's going to read. How about quietly charming husband material, instead? I could pretend to be Spencer for an afternoon." He didn't mention that he was pretty sure he was wearing Reid's underwear, and was going to have to apologise for that, later.  
  
Mary laughed, and once she'd gotten control of herself, she looked over at Chaz and started laughing again. "Examples?"  
  
"Unlikely to speak unless spoken to, probably going to buy you flowers the minute your back is turned, will extremely politely slap down any attempt to engage in the manly arts of shit-talking the little woman." Chaz shrugged. "It puts you in charge, but a little less vividly than if I'm always two steps behind you to the left, unless you tell me to be somewhere else, don't speak unless _you _address me, and gaze adoringly at you when you do."  
  
"You... that's a thing you _do_?" Mary looked intrigued. "I mean, I guess you do. I watched you do almost that last night. Stepping over the table? Seriously?"  
  
"I'd say it wasn't about the beer, but I think you picked that up. Feel free to take it personally, because it was pretty personal, but that was way more about you than it was about him. Still, yes, 'fawning submissive' is on the list of things I can and will do undercover. I'm pretty believable, too. And, you know, in the right context, once you turn yourself into an object, people stop noticing you're there." Chaz tipped his head, lips quirking dismissively. "Unfortunately, we're out in Hicksville, and that's not going to pass without comment. If anything, people would _stare_."  
  
"So, tone it down to the easily-ignorable dweeb with a wicked, if requited, crush." Mary nodded and turned off the heat, pulling out the keys. "Yeah, we're probably believable like that. You're some hopeless nerd who got lucky with the only girl in the office and I'm the same horse-faced little snot I've always been. And Trey's gonna say something about how I should've picked him while I had the chance."  
  
"Trey's lucky I'm not allowed to hand him his ass until _after _you talk to his grandfather, and probably not then either. We might need him again." Chaz opened the door and raised his eyebrows at Mary, waiting for her to tell him if they'd covered everything they needed to. As much as he was the fed, this was not actually his op. "And you're not horse-faced, either. I like your face."  
  
Mary opened her door and got out, leaning back down to grab her gloves. "That's just because you're weird."  
  
As they crossed the square, Chaz made himself take Mary's hand, smile at her. Anyone looking at them would see a happy couple, as long as he could keep his shit together. Really, he didn't want to touch her. He wanted to be back at the house, making Byers's data play nice. He wanted to be anywhere but out in public pretending to be in a serious relationship with the woman he wanted to be in a serious relationship with. Which was fucked up, no matter how you looked at it, but he really felt like he'd be better off just putting his foot down. Unfortunately, they needed an official witness, and Reid was already established as 'Frank Arroway''s significant other.  
  
And people _were _looking. The men with their pipes and cigars who hovered beside the door of Whitley's watched them cross the square. Those were the eyes of men who knew everything about this town, and everyone who passed their court.  
  
Chaz leaned down to put his lips next to Mary's ear. "Smile at me like I just said something romantic," he whispered.  
  
Mary laughed brightly and bumped him with her hip, letting go of his hand to slip her arm around him and stuff her hand into his coat pocket, next to his. He tossed his now-awkward arm around her shoulders and pressed his face against the side of her knit hat. A happy couple, giggling at each other as they came across the road to the shop.  
  
"Well, Whitfield Whitley the Third, is that you? Last time I saw you, I swear you had more hair!" Mary pressed her free hand to her chest and laughed, some of the men joining in.  
  
"She's right, Trey," one of them teased. "Bout time to get one of those caps with the fringe in front."  
  
An older man whooped and choked on the smoke from his cigar, bending to hold on to his knees while he coughed and laughed.  
  
"Who's the stick-figure?" Trey Whitley asked, obviously trying to turn the conversation away from himself. "Is he even going to stay up, if you let go?"  
  
"Why would I let go?" Mary laughed. "He's warm! He's also thinking about proposing. Chaz, honey, I grew up with these boys. That's Bill Gardner, Trey Whitley, and Marty Silverman. And that there's Mr Everson. How you doing down there, sir?"  
  
The older man coughed again and straightened up with a little help from Silverman. "You should've been here a little earlier, Miss Mary. Wendell was here, dropping off the Trib. He'd like to see you again, I think."  
  
"I missed Wendy!?" Mary leaned around Chaz as if he were a street sign. "Well, shit! He still got that little place out back? I'll run in and see him, on my way back up to the farm."  
  
Everson nodded and cleared his throat.  
  
"What are you doing up at the old farm anyway?" Gardner asked, trying to re-light his pipe. "I heard you sold the place to some city folks."  
  
"Sold it to a nice guy from Kansas, who I just found out was family." Mary shrugged and smiled. "You know those places where you send a swab and they tell you if you're related to anybody else? Well, we've got people in Kansas. And he's paying the asking price, no questions, no arguments. And you can tell he's one of us, too. Looks just like me and Dick. It's the wildest thing."  
  
"And what's your name, young man?" Everson asked Chaz, peering up at him from a cloud of fragrant smoke. "I was just a bit distracted when Miss Mary introduced you."  
  
"Chaz Villette." Chaz held out his hand. "I'm Mary's... er..."  
  
"Do we still say 'boyfriend' at our age, Trey?" Mary shot Trey a smug look. "But, we're coming up on serious, so I figured it was time to drag him out here and dig up the old family stories. Which is why we're here to see Ol' Whitley, not you."  
  
"You grew up with him. Wouldn't he remember things?" Chaz asked, feigning innocence. He knew that other than the elder Everson, none of these guys were old enough to have the slightest idea what would've been going on during the period they were looking for.  
  
"Well, some, I guess," Mary conceded, reaching out to pat Trey on the shoulder. "Come on and help me find Aunt Helen's picture up on the wall. Your wife up there, yet, Trey?"  
  
Gardner snorted and blew a smoke ring. "You _got _a wife yet, Trey?"  
  
"Can't say I do, Bilbo. Just been borrowing yours." Trey stepped around Gardner, tossing open the door of the shop with a little more force than necessary. He led the apparently happy couple inside, gesturing to the wall behind the counter, which was covered in photographs of smiling women, on one side, and smiling children holding generations of report cards and candies on the other.  
  
"I've never seen anything like it," Chaz said, stepping up to the counter for a closer look.  
  
Trey waved him around the back of the counter and pointed. "That's Mrs Helen, right there. Mary's aunt. It's a damn shame about her boy. I wasn't old enough to know Dick, he was a dozen years older or something, but there's pictures of him on the other side. For seventy years, every kid who could prove they got an A, we'd give 'em a piece of gum or a lolly for every one and take a picture to put up on the wall. It's easier, now. Back then, you'd have to drive down to the Photomat in York, at the end of the week and hope all the pictures came out. Now we just take 'em digital and they go right up in a few minutes."  
  
"He looks like ... I was going to say he looks like you, but he doesn't. Not here. I can tell it's him from the last one, because that one looks like you, and I can kind of follow his face back, but ... _wow_." Chaz tapped a picture. "That's him, right? Did you used to look like that?"  
  
Mary laughed, pulling Chaz's other arm around her as she squeezed past Trey to get a look. "You could tell we were related."  
  
"When me and Mary were kids, we used to think he got his nose broken or something, 'cause it's not like that until he's... what is he there, fifteen? Sixteen?"  
  
"Fifteen," Mary said. "I know every year's school photos. I wanted to be cool, like Dick."  
  
"Yeah, you did. Except Dick wasn't cool." Trey snorted. "So I guess you succeeded, then, huh?"  
  
"Do I look like the kind of guy who would date a girl who wasn't cool?" Chaz shot Trey a long look over Mary's head.  
  
"You look like the kind of guy who wouldn't know cool if it walked up and kicked him in the nuts," Trey decided, after a moment's thought.  
  
"And you'd know that from personal experience, wouldn't you, Trey?" Mary cooed, a little too brightly. "That why you're still single? Get your balls racked too many times, and now you can't even get a smile out of Nancy?"  
  
Chaz took note of the name. He'd ask _later_.  
  
Trey rolled his eyes dismissively. "Nancy moved to Lincoln. Don't you even visit your _parents_?"  
  
"Well, I'm warming up for it, now!" Stepping away from Chaz, Mary gestured to him with both hands like a gameshow host. "Which is why I want to see your granddad, before he keels over. Always had a sense there was more going on in this town than _we _ever knew, and if anybody knows it, it's Ol' Whitley."  
  
"Why don't you just... ask your parents?" Trey whispered loudly, holding up his hands as if he were proposing something scandalous.  
  
"They're not gonna tell me! They're my parents!" Mary tossed her hair and twisted a pen into it to hold it in place. "If you wanted to know a secret about your... You don't have aunts and uncles, do you? Fine, if you wanted to know something nobody would tell you about your dad, would you ask him? No. I don't think you would, Trey, I think you'd ask _Mr Everson_. Or maybe even Mr Wasserman, if the Wassermans are even talking to you."  
  
"There aren't any _scandals _about Mrs Helen!" Trey looked shocked at the idea. "She was a good woman. Always did right by all of us, even your damn cousin, not that he cared!"  
  
Mary jabbed a finger into Trey's thick chest, leaning right into his face. "You didn't even know Dick, so you can shut the fuck up, Trey. And I'm not telling you what we found in that house, but I think your _granddad _could actually handle it with some kind of grace, and maybe without lying to me. _You're_ not old enough to remember. _I'm_ not old enough to remember. And your dad never gave a shit about anything but his horses, so _he's_ not gonna know. The Whitleys have been the centre of this town for _seventy years_, Trey. Your granddad knows what the fuck is up!"  
  
Trey sighed, and Chaz could see she'd gotten through to him. "I don't even know if he's in a condition to have company. You going to be in town a while?"  
  
"Not longer than I have to be. The hospital wants me back pretty quick after the holiday." Mary made shooing motions with her hands. "Go tell him Little Dinosaur's here to visit."


	9. Chapter 9

Reid sat stretched along the couch with Langly between his thighs, leaning back against his shoulder, fingers flying across the keyboard. The coffee table was pulled close against the side of the couch and stacked with the remnants of the last two hours -- a half-eaten bowl of pretzels, the empty and full halves of a six pack of Jolt, a fistful of pens and highlighters, the coffee pot and a half-finished cup, and Chaz's endless sketches and tables made of Byers's data. A few pages of the last occupied one of Reid's hands, and he kept staring, flipping between pages, waiting for something to pop. There had to be something he was missing.  
  
His other hand was otherwise occupied, at Langly's wordless insistence. He'd had the arm draped around Langly's waist until Langly had pulled that hand down to his crotch, with an inquisitive sound. Reid could've been annoyed. For a moment, he almost was. And then he remembered this wasn't even his case -- it was Langly's -- and there was nothing to do until Mary came back with more information. They'd already gotten almost everything out there, and the information they had was insufficient to do much with, by itself. Even with interviews, there wasn't likely to be much more, unless someone still had records from the clinic. What they needed was DNA swabs from the other ... he hesitated to call them 'potential victims'. Were the clones really victims? Their parents certainly were. But, how does one even describe someone who wouldn't exist if not for a crime? Particularly a crime their parents probably didn't even know about. The other suspected clones, then. The point was they were still staring at the same data from the day before. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change until Mary got back, because Chaz had insisted on going with her, in keeping with this supposedly being _his_ case. The point was there was nothing they could do that would be terribly useful, but Langly clearly had his mind on a distraction.  
  
Reid stretched his fingers down between Langly's thighs, dragging his nails slowly along the denim. The muffled sound of surprise from Langly was entirely worth it. Well, maybe he'd be a real tease, this time. Byers and Frohike had gone out to argue about the barn. Chaz and Mary wouldn't be back for a couple of hours, most likely. Maybe he'd just see how long he could keep Langly on edge, before Langly demanded he either get serious or stop.

* * *

The man upstairs sat in an overstuffed chair by the window, a heavy blanket draped across his lap and a cane leaning against the wall beside him. His glasses were thick, making his eyes look owlish as he peered at his visitors over a steaming cup of soup. "Why, that _is _you! How many years has it been?"  
  
"Too many, Mr Whitley." Mary smiled awkwardly, rocking back onto her heels as she jammed her hands into her pockets. "I went to the city, and it's been nothing but work, work, work. That and if I came back here, I'd have to put up with Trey."  
  
"Better Trey than Junior. At least Trey _tries_." Whitley patted the table next to him, gesturing to the chair on the other side of it, which also offered a view of the back of the property. "Come sit and tell me about this black man you're selling Peter's place to."  
  
Mary looked confused. "Black...?"  
  
Chaz looked _surprised_.  
  
"You think I don't know high yellow when I see it?" Whitley laughed easily.  
  
"Around _here_?" Chaz shot back, with one eyebrow raised. "What makes you think_ I'm_ buying the Langly place?"  
  
"Little Mary's selling it, and you came in with her. Can't imagine she'd be bringing anyone else around with questions about the place."  
  
"Sorry, Mr Whitley. Chaz is just my boyfriend. I just had some questions about some things I found cleaning the place out for the people I _am _selling it to." Mary squinted up at Chaz, as she sat down. "You're black? Really?"  
  
Chaz shrugged. "Kind of a mutt. Most people guess Latino, but not this late in the year. This late in the year, people guess French. I mean, they're all probably right, in the end."  
  
"Probably?" Whitley picked up on it.  
  
"I'm an orphan." Chaz shrugged again, going for the easy answer. "I really have no idea."  
  
"A man with no past but his own." Whitley nodded and sipped his soup. "That's got an adventurous sound to it. But, you remember one thing, boy. She's too good for you."  
  
Chaz's spine straightened, and Mary opened her mouth to object, but Whitley kept going.  
  
"She's not just some girl who knows her cows and her corn, you understand me? She's an educated and worldly woman, and she probably makes more money than you do. She may be from Benedict, but we're just as proud of her here, in Saltville, because this is where her family's from, and she's too good for my grandson and every other man around here, just like she always has been, ever since she was a little girl. We all knew she was gonna be special." Whitley reached across the table and patted Mary's hand. "Why don't you find yourself a nice woman, Mary, sweetheart? You deserve someone who can take proper care of you."  
  
Mary laughed a little hysterically. "I might make more money than he does, but that doesn't mean I can afford a housewife, in this economy! Besides, you know me, Mr Whitley. I'd just pick a pretty girl with a big microscope, and then nobody would be cooking dinner."  
  
Chaz cleared his throat and nodded, trying to keep a straight face. "That's why she likes me. I cook."  
  
"He cooks like Betty Crocker preparing for the apocalypse." Mary pushed her glasses up with the back of her hand. "But, really, I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about when Dick was born."  
  
Whitley squinted across the table at her for a long moment. "And this is to do with something you found in the _house_?"  
  
"There's so many boxes of papers in the attic..." Mary sighed and groaned, glad Langly and Frohike had done most of the sorting through them. "But, we found a bill from... I think it was some kind of fertility clinic in Lincoln. A place called 'The Family Way'? It's not there any more, and this is the first I've heard of it, but we thought if anyone would know, it would be you."  
  
"And there's a reason you're not asking your parents." Whitley stated the obvious as if it were truly just that obvious. "You're afraid they won't tell you."  
  
"If they were going to tell me, they'd have done it."  
  
"You know folks said some real rude things about Miss Ruthie, when you were born. Well, no. A little later."  
  
"Because I look just like Dick, even if my parents tried to hide it." Mary watched Whitley's face. "I know it's true. I've seen pictures of both of us. Dad used to put my hair in curls so nobody would notice -- you remember."  
  
"Dick didn't look like his father, either. We all just thought he looked like Helen's folks. _We _never knew them," Whitley explained, slowly shaking his head. "But, when you came out looking just like him, nobody knew what to think. The Langlys have lived here longer than the Whitleys. We know what Langlys look like. Your family hasn't changed much, until the two of you." He paused and sipped his soup. "But, the town was having some troubles, then. People said we'd angered god. For a lot of years, we'd been a little town, but a prosperous one. We had enough to sell it on, and everybody had big families -- five or six kids was normal, when I was growing up. But, there's a good twenty or thirty years in there where suddenly if you had one baby, it was a miracle. And the government folks came down and told us to stop using that fertiliser that carried us through the bad years. We were never a big town, but it just dried up."  
  
"So, if Aunt Helen went to a fertility clinic, that would've been pretty normal, right?" Mary suggested, reaching out to take Chaz's hand. She knew they had to keep up appearances, and that Whitley was sharper than he looked.  
  
"Oh, people were trying anything. I don't know how many young men around my son's age came in to buy things they'd read might help. Lots of eggs changed hands, for a few years in there. Then it was bone marrow. All kinds of crazy things." Whitley shook his head again. "And then there were things that nobody was talking about, but we all knew were going on. Wife swapping, doctors from the coast, sacrificing chickens to ancient Roman gods -- you should see the statues Hank used to have out in the field, curly-haired boys with ding-a-lings as big as your leg, but he said it was some Roman god of fertility. That clinic would've been one of those things, though. I bet there were more wives who tried it, but nobody would talk about that kind of thing, back then. It was better to say you got over it by eating more eggs."  
  
Whitley's eyes narrowed and he studied Mary. "So, you being a doctor and all, tell me about that clinic. My Beulah and I had our son and two daughters just fine, so it's not something I'd ever have thought of. Didn't really know there was something like that, back when it mattered."  
  
Mary nodded. Whitley was almost a hundred, what with the gap between his son and grandson. Semi-modern medical science wouldn't have been much of a concern for him. "So, you know your horses, so I'm guessing you know how it's supposed to work. They do it the same as you'd do for a horse, mostly."  
  
"So, you're saying that Dick _should've_ looked like a Langly."  
  
"I'm saying I look like Dick, so we _must _look like somebody in our family..." Mary raised one eyebrow, giving Whitley a somewhat dubious look. "Unless that clinic screwed up somehow. And that means _my _mom would've had to go there, too. It's not the kind of thing you drive home and ask. I was hoping you'd heard something. You hear _everything_, Mr Whitley."  
  
"Well, I didn't hear anything about a clinic, but it would make sense." Whitley stared out the window, sipping his soup. "What I heard was that Pete punched Jonah square in the teeth for saying Helen had been sneaking around on him with some guy from York. Now, you knew Helen as well as I did, I'd think, and of those two options, I'd say that first one makes a good deal more sense than the other. But, I can sure see why you'd want to know more about that place, since neither of you look a thing like the rest of the family. You think that clinic matched up Ruthie and Helen with somebody else."  
  
"Something like that. Especially since I got-- Oh, nobody told you yet! That's why you thought--!" Mary laughed and sat forward, leaning over the table. "We sold the farm, but we sold it to my cousin from Kansas. And this is where you say, 'You don't have a cousin from Kansas!' Except I do. We got a DNA test done by two different labs. And he looks just like me and Dick. And I'm starting to wonder if we're the only ones, or if that clinic was up to something."  
  
"You know, I've heard rumours that after the War, some Nazi scientists took their research to Brazil and Argentina. And they were doing a _lot _of work in genetics. The sixties seems a little late for that, but..." Chaz shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. "I'm just spitballing. I have no idea how much of it is true, but all of you are blond-haired and blue-eyed, at least one of you came from a mysterious fertility clinic, and none of you look like your parents."  
  
Horror crossed Mary's face as she looked up at Chaz. "I hope you're wrong."  
  
"I hope so, too." Whitley swirled his soup and peered at Chaz for a few moments. "But, you do know we took some of their scientists, near the end of the war. Defectors, mostly. I heard we had Germans working on space rockets, so that's a little less unlikely than you'd want it to be."  
  
"Okay, this isn't an Indiana Jones movie, guys. _Nazis?_ Are you serious? Are you really telling me you think Nazi scientists came into this country and just... set up a fertility clinic to produce more ... bizarrely Swedish-looking kids?" Mary's glasses slid down as her eyebrows went up, and she stared at Chaz over the tops of them until she was ready to admit she couldn't actually see like that. "Isn't it more likely that someone working in the clinic replaced a few client samples with his own?"  
  
"Don't know until we find out more about that clinic." Chaz tried to look innocent, but wasn't sure he pulled it off.  
  
"Well, this is the most fun I've had in twenty years!" Whitley declared, slapping the table. "A real-life mystery story, right here in Saltville! This is better than Brother Cadfael! I'll make you a deal, Doctor Dinosaur: I'll tell you whatever I know, if you tell me what you find out."  
  
"Done." Mary stuck her hand across the table and Whitley shook it gleefully.  
  
"Oh, what an adventure! I've always wanted an adventure. Closest I got was my dear Beulah."  
  
Chaz gazed at Mary, hoping he didn't look like he wanted to be anywhere else. "Sometimes a good woman's all the adventure you need."  
  
"She's much too good for you, young man," Whitley reminded him. "Though maybe it's the cooking. Do you do the washing, too? This woman needs a good wife."  
  
Mary laughed as she stood up. "I'd have gone for his sister, but I don't think she can cook. I picked the smart one in the family."  
  
"Leaving so soon?" Whitley asked.  
  
"We've got to go investigate that mystery, Mr Whitley! I'll let you know when I start figuring things out!" Mary smiled widely, and Chaz thought he might swallow his own tongue.  
  
"What if I were to call Old Joe for you," Whitley proposed, after a moment, setting his soup on the table. "I could tell him I heard a rumour and with the farm selling and seeing you, I just thought of it again. A matter of personal curiosity, and a much more polite one than Jonah's. He _might _tell me, even if he wouldn't tell you. He's about my son's age. We've got a picture of him on the wall somewhere."  
  
"Give us a day or two? I'll be back with more news soon enough, and then I'll let you know if it's a good idea. I just want to make sure we know what we're talking about, before you go asking around."  
  
"Ah, but that's it, isn't it? I'll be saying I don't know a damned thing, and if I'm wrong he'll laugh and tell me it's coo-coo."  
  
"Man's got a point," Chaz admitted.  
  
Mary squinted at one and then the other of them, trying to decide if this was a good enough argument to keep her out of trouble with her family. "Okay, but if dad calls me and asks, I have no idea what he's talking about. But, _since he mentioned it_..."  
  
Whitley laughed and clapped. "There's the Little Dinosaur I know!"   
  
Mary stretched a hand across her glasses. "This is turning into some Scooby Doo shit. But with Nazis."  
  
"I get to be Velma!" Chaz decided with a lopsided grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your periodic reminder this fic and it's associated fandoms have a [Pillowfort community](https://www.pillowfort.social/community/Vexation%20of%20Spirit). And, for bonus points, I have a stack of PF invites, if anyone would like to join.


	10. Chapter 10

"You know," Trey said, as Chaz paid for the raisins and the quart of cream, "she'd have done better with me, and one day she's going to realise that. Can't say I'm sure what she sees in you."  
  
Chaz slipped his wallet back into his pocket and picked up his groceries, before he caught Trey's eye. "I'm proportional."  
  
Somewhere around the fresh vegetables, Mary choked on a laugh, darting between the bins to catch up with Chaz as he opened the door. She managed to say quick goodbyes to the men still standing around in the snow, without giving in to the creeping cackle coiled in the back of her throat. Halfway across the square, though, she looked up at Chaz.  
  
"Proportional? Are you really?"  
  
The look Chaz returned questioned her sanity. "Shit, no. I don't care what your cousin has to say about it, either. He's wrong, and I would tell you why he's wrong, but you're related to him, and you don't want to know."  
  
Mary stopped, ankle-deep in snow, and stared into the distance for a few seconds, blinking. "Wait, wait, wait. Did you just say what I think you just said?"  
  
"I said you don't want to know."  
  
"Fine. _Implied_." Mary took a few quick steps to catch up. "You're into that?"  
  
"I'm into a number of his finer attributes, which I intend to leave unspecified." Chaz unlocked the car and stuck the cream and raisins between the seats, as he got in and leaned over to unlock the other door. "Mostly because it's none of your business. My relationship with him is his business and mine. My relationship with you, such as it isn't, is yours."  
  
"Hey, reminder time? _You _were into _me_." Mary sat down and slammed the car door behind her. "Maybe it took me a minute to get used to the idea that you'd been screwing my missing cousin, presumed dead, and like... didn't bother to tell me."  
  
"I told you. And before that, I warned you that we were going to stay at 'friends' until I could tell you the thing I couldn't tell you. And maybe I should've said something sooner, but we weren't sure who you were, and the first time I asked you out to dinner, I thought you might be a _serial killer_. Which probably says more about my taste than it says about you." Chaz managed to keep the smile on his face, the relaxed set to his shoulders, until they'd driven out of the square. He wasn't giving Trey any more ammunition. "And Spencer was _furious_."  
  
"Jealous?" Mary shot Chaz a sidelong glance, tinged with suspicion.  
  
"No, he thought you were a serial killer, too. He had some serious questions about my judgement, and my ability to arrest you, if that was what we had to do." Chaz tactfully left out the part where Reid had been concerned about the possibility of disease. "I reassured him that it would not be the first time I'd arrested a woman I was in the middle of falling in love with. Which... really did not improve the situation at all." He sighed. "This was not a good idea, which is not surprising, because it was a decision involving me and an attractive woman, which, I'll be honest, never ends well for me."  
  
"This didn't even start," Mary argued, opening the box of raisins, only to have Chaz pull it out of her hands. "Hey!"  
  
"When we get back to the house, I'm making a Lady Baltimore cake. I need the raisins." The expression slid off Chaz's face as he glanced over at Mary, leaving the box of raisins in his lap. "Did you eat breakfast? How hungry are you?"  
  
"I grabbed some of Fitz's leftover midnight bacon, while you were in the bathroom. I just have the munchies." Mary studied Chaz's face. "And that's a panic face. I know the nerd panic face."  
  
"I keep half expecting to turn around and find out you're one of us. You've seen me eat."  
  
"Still think you should be eating more." Mary reached over and wrapped her fingers around Chaz's bicep. She couldn't touch them, but there was not nearly enough of a gap between them.  
  
"Your cousin has been feeding me. I keep telling him I've been feeding myself for the last twenty-something years, but he just gives me that look and sends another ham." Chaz knew damn well he shouldn't have been driving that fast on a snow-covered dirt road he'd only driven once, in the opposite direction, but statistically, if anyone was going to avoid skidding into a ditch at this speed, it would be him. "Anyway, do I need to be worried about you not eating?"  
  
Mary sighed and put her foot up on the dashboard, watching the snow-covered fields fly by. "I don't even like raisins."  
  
Chaz reached into one of his multitude of pockets and tossed a protein bar into her lap. "That's a yes. Frank -- and it feels weird calling him that in front of you, but I can't exactly call him Langly, because you're Langly, too, and if I call him Dick, he's going to kill us both. I had a point. Frank who is not Frank. If you share his taste, you're going to punch me in the face after the first bite, but please wait until I'm not driving."  
  
"Are they that bad? I don't eat these things. I don't know." Mary peeled the wrapper and squinted at it, sniffed it. "I've put way more questionable things than that in my mouth. And you're right. It is weird. But, it's really probably better if I stop calling him 'Dick', especially with the cops hanging around, even if Sheriff Douchebag does already know."  
  
"Speaking of... Do you know Harding? Is there anything else I should be aware of there that's going to bite us in the ass later?" Chaz asked, as they hit one of those cow-proof gratings in the road and the car slid sideways. He was never this distracted. He should've seen it. He should've _anticipated _it. Still, a minor miscalculation, and one that corrected itself a second later when the rear tires hit the road instead of slick metal.  
  
Mary went on as if she hadn't even noticed, but that was because she really hadn't. Chaz was a better driver than anyone had a right to be, driving a compact car, with the roads frozen over like they were. They slid a little, but given that it had snowed again and the mud had swallowed most of the salt, she'd half-expected to be in a ditch, by now.  
  
"Nah, he's older than Dick. I don't really have two words to say to the guy, most of the time. We've got nothing to say to each other, for obvious reasons and more obvious reasons." Mary pointed to an upcoming red mailbox. "That's us."  
  
Chaz slowed down enough to take the turn without sliding off the road. Snow chains. They needed snow chains for this road, and he was going to ask Langly as soon as he got in the door. There was probably a set somewhere on the property. He'd just been so distracted, the last few days -- nightmares, not sleeping, Mary suddenly almost hitting on him.  
  
He parked where he seemed to remember the car having been when he got into it, and turned off the engine. "So, I'm not sure we know more than we did this morning."  
  
"Sure we do. We know Mr Whitley, the great knower of all things Saltville, knows that people were trying all kinds of crazy shit to get pregnant, and he's going to help us find out about the clinic without telling my dad what we know." Mary smiled and winked at Chaz. "And we know Trey hasn't grown out of being a complete sack of horseshit. I keep hoping."  
  
"For the good of all mankind?" Chaz drawled, pulling the bottle of cream out of the cupholder. "Or are you holding hope he becomes reasonable enough to take him up on his offer?"  
  
"Definitely the good of all mankind, and mostly his family. The Whitleys are nice folks, except for Trey."  
  
"Still not sure how I feel about being called 'high yellow'," Chaz admitted, shaking his head.  
  
"The dude's about a hundred years old," Mary said, shrugging. "He says weird shit, sometimes, because there's stuff people just don't talk about much, out here. The first time he ever told me not to go out with Trey -- like somebody needed to tell me, right? -- he says he'd rather find out I'm a Sapphist than going around with his grandson. Me, I'm like, 'Isn't that the stuff you use to make the rice yellow?'"  
  
The laugh took Chaz by surprise and left him cackling into his hand. "Saffron," he squeaked, between snortling attempts to catch his breath and stop.  
  
Mary just watched him for a bit, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, the shift of his cheeks under his hand. "You're really cute when you laugh."  
  
Chaz cleared his throat, after the laugh stopped in a strangled sound. "Pretty sure you just need new glasses. Maybe a club somewhere more exciting than Omaha."  
  
"No, these are the new glasses." Mary rubbed her fingernail across the nearly invisible engraving on one side, just to make sure. "Pretty cute when you're not laughing, too."  
  
He knew the way she was looking at him, and two months ago, he'd have tripped over himself to let it happen. But, now, he wanted her just as much as he had then, and just as much as he wanted her, he wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere but where she was. She was going to break him. She was going to utterly dismantle him. And even before it got that far, Spencer was going to be _pissed_.  
  
But, he couldn't seem to move. He couldn't make himself shift away from her, bring his hand up, get out of the car. And this time when she leaned in, he made no move to stop her from kissing him. He made no move at all, until his lips parted for her tongue, parted for a gasp, as her fingers twisted into his hair and clenched tight. She'd watched Spencer do it to him, he realised, as his body reacted with absolutely no input from his struggling mind.  
  
His hand drifted up to her cheek, and he loved the way her skin felt against his fingertips. He could feel the warmth radiating from her, the desire in the hungry way she kissed him. And he stayed firmly in his own head, despite the temptation to take just a little look, to figure out just what she wanted from him, just what she was actually offering. She smelled like hand warmers and laundry soap, and he wanted to stay right here, just like this, forever.  
  
So, that was when he pulled away, slamming the back of his head against the window, as he took his hand off her face and fumbled behind himself to open the car door.  
  
"Stop. Just... stop." He got the door open and pulled himself out of the car with one hand on the roof, the other hand holding the raisins. When he leaned back in for the cream, which he'd apparently put back in the cup holder at some point, Mary eyed him curiously. "You have made it exceptionally clear several times that I'm not what you're looking for, that, in fact, a number of things about me _that I can't change_ disgust you. So, really, just... stop. This isn't going to work the way either of us want it to. And trust me, I _do _want it to, but at this point in our lives, I think we both know we don't get everything we want."  
  
Chaz slammed the car door and made his way briskly up the path to the house. At least someone had salted the walk, today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have mentioned the Advent Challenge, which is a thing I am doing, and the votes are in -- every five days from a little later today until the 22nd, there will be a pinup of Chaz over in [this tag on Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/penbrydd/tagged/advent%202019). And the other 20 days will be taken up by characters from totally unrelated fandoms.


	11. Chapter 11

Reid and Langly lay tangled on the couch like exactly the kind of teenagers neither of them had been, with half an ear out for the sound of the back door, as Reid arched and begged for more, head tipped back over the arm of the couch as Langly's lips pressed against his neck. Even if they did manage to sit back up, there would be no way to hide what they'd been doing, and for a split second, Reid wondered if it was even worth the attempt. And then the thought was gone, swept away in the sudden electrical tension that swept along his nerves.  
  
"Tell me," Langly breathed against his ear.  
  
"Like this-- yes! Just like this, but more! Harder! Just--! That--!" The next sound from Reid's mouth was guttural and satisfied. The next sound in the room was the front door slamming.  
  
Reid tried to sit up, accidentally headbutting Langly. "Get up! Get up!" he hissed, pulling himself out from under Langly over the arm of the couch, the sound of a single set of footsteps on the stairs clearly audible. "Something's wrong."  
  
As if to underscore that assessment, the door closed again, still firmly, but more quietly, and the squeak of wet boots could be heard in the hall. Langly twisted himself around and tried to smooth his hair, to look like he'd been doing anything other than rubbing himself off against his hot boyfriend's raging boner. Not that he didn't want anyone to think that was the kind of thing he'd do, just... maybe not on the sofa, in the middle of the day. Not at his age.  
  
Reid tugged at his trousers and tried to untwist his sweater before... he assumed that was Mary made it into the room. He'd managed to pick up his coffee and look anything but casual when she appeared in the doorway.  
  
"Whitley doesn't know shit, Trey's still a jackass, and I want to know what piece of furniture one of you was just bent over, so I don't sit on it."  
  
Langly turned to look at her, a little suspiciously. "And what, Villette just really had to take a piss?"  
  
They could all hear the pipes clank as the shower turned on, and all eyes rose to the ceiling.  
  
"Excuse me." Reid headed for the hall, coffee still in hand, pausing when he passed Mary, who had just stepped out of the door. "I can assure you there are no bodily fluids belonging to either of us on the furniture, unless he left them there as a child."  
  
He swept out of the room without waiting for a response, suddenly conscious of how difficult it was to walk swiftly on a polished wood floor in socks. Still, he made it up the stairs without incident, and leaned on the wall beside the bathroom door, knocking with the hand not holding coffee. "It's just me. You want to tell me what happened?"  
  
"Not really!" came a reply from closer to the door than expected. The door opened just enough for Chaz to lean out in a faint wisp of steam. "But, I'm probably going to, because if I don't, you'll find out _because _I'm not telling you. We already broke that, once, and I don't want to do that to you again. And that is exactly what's going to happen."  
  
"Thanks. I'd prefer to avoid repeating that." Reid sipped his coffee, already loosening his grip when Chaz plucked the cup out of his hand and finished it.  
  
"One, you've had enough coffee. You're vibrating." Chaz stepped back and pulled the door open. "Two, come in before I let all the steam out. I'm still trying to convince myself that I should take my clothes off before I try to get in the shower."  
  
"That's not why I'm vibrating." Stepping in, Reid closed the door behind him and slid down the wall to sit in front of the sink, looking up at Chaz. "I would assume this is more of a not wanting to take your clothes off situation, rather than anything I'd expect from _downstairs_."  
  
Chaz ran a hand through his hair and sighed, dropping onto the toilet lid which creaked in protest. "I don't want to take off my clothes. I want to take off my skin."  
  
"Do you want to tell me, or do you just want to show me?" Reid asked, resting his elbows on his knees as he stretched.  
  
"You don't want to see this." Chaz held up a hand and closed his eyes. "No, I don't want to ... inject this into-- Look, you already know it's Mary. You have an amazing relationship with Langly, and we both know that 'the wrong Langly' is a problem we've had before. And you look like you just had the good time I walked out on."  
  
A certain horrible clarity came into Reid's eyes. "Did I do this to you? I didn't even think--"  
  
"Spencer? No. No, you didn't. I wasn't even aware of you again until I came in the door -- and good job on that, by the way." Chaz cleared his throat, the awkward half of a horrified smile creeping across his face. "Because I'm pretty sure none of the events of today would have been improved by the uncontrollable proxy boner."  
  
Reid's hand leapt up to cover his mouth and he didn't quite smother a small snort. "I'm still sorry about my birthday."  
  
"I'm not sure I am. Neither the time nor the place, but we managed to prove that even a couple thousand miles between us doesn't have to interrupt that connection. And that was completely incredible, which you know, because you were there." A tiny sound of amusement slipped out of Chaz. "But, I'm still glad we've both learned to, ah... not do that, if we don't mean to."  
  
"And back to the subject at hand, that was the last thing I wanted to do while you were out with Mary. So, what happened?"  
  
"I'm stupidly attracted to her. And at this point, it is actually _stupid_. And I know that. And you know I know that. But, just because I want to doesn't mean I should, and I've been pretty good about that. But, she's _changing her mind_ about me, and I am not someone I want to be while it's happening. I was really starting to be okay with the idea that things were always going to be a little tense between us, and eventually, I'd just get over it. Not the first time." Chaz folded himself in half, resting his head on his knees. "I don't know what the hell Langly said to her, but she's... She's almost back to where she was when we first met, at least on some level. She's looking for a weekend fling, and I'm not. And even if I had any deranged hope of it becoming more than that, since that seems to be a trend for you and me, right now, there are things about me that ... I know there will come an argument where she's going to use one or more of those as a weapon, because she's almost exactly Langly, and that's exactly what Langly's like, and that is going to be the absolute end."  
  
"Langly's said some of that to you, anyway," Reid pointed out.  
  
"I'm not in love with him. I care a lot less."  
  
"You're not in love with her, either."  
  
"No, but I will be. I know myself at least that well." An agonised sigh preceded the next rush of words. "I really don't want to sleep with someone who's so fundamentally revolted by unalterable things about me. Even if I stopped having sex with Langly, I've already done it. As she says, he's already licked me. There's nothing I can do about that. There's really nothing I could ever have done about my parents, and she grossed out so hard I got sick just sitting next to her. I wasn't even trying! She's just that _loud_! And this is before we even get to the part where I can and have read her mind, _on purpose_! You can't tell me that's going to go over well! 'Well I thought you were a serial killer at the time' isn't really going to cut it!"  
  
"You've made your decision, and, personally, I think it's a good one. It's not an easy one, but I do think it's the better choice. I think, in the end, that it will hurt less."  
  
"I can hear you, Spencer. That door's not as closed as you think it is." Chaz looked up. "If I've made up my mind, then what's the problem?"  
  
"I didn't say it."  
  
"You didn't have to." Chaz mashed his face against his knees again. "She kissed me. I let her kiss me, and I'm pretty sure it took me an entire minute to remember that I wanted her to stop. I wanted to fuck her right there in the car."  
  
Reid stayed silent for a little too long. "How certain are you that she's not anomalous?"  
  
One small, miserable laugh escaped Chaz. "No, this is really just me. I'm just... that's absolutely just me. I'm pretty sure I even have documentation. I'm really just that much of a disaster."  
  
"I'd say you should spend some time talking to Fitz, but that is exactly the opposite of helping."  
  
Chaz tipped his head just enough to glare. "Fitz has an excuse. Holly actually is anomalous and incredibly dangerous. I'm strongly recommending Idlewood, once things calm down a little, but she hasn't-- _to _her, not _for _her. If she doesn't know she's doing it, she needs to get that under control, before she does a lot more damage than she did to Fitz."  
  
"Back to the subject at hand, or at least a subject at hand, you're going to run out of hot water in about three minutes." Reid gestured toward the shower.  
  
"It's still running so they can't hear us downstairs," Chaz admitted, after a moment. "It was just the first thing I thought of-- I wanted it off me. Except you can't really wash yourself off of yourself, so... This is just ... awkward. Extremely awkward. There were two ways I saw this going, and this was not one of them. She was either going to forgive me, and we'd still have something -- unlikely, but possible -- or she'd be justifiably furious with me until the end of time. Either of those reactions, I could work with. This... I don't want this. I can't handle this."  
  
"This, if you'll excuse me, sounds suspiciously like your first option -- forgives you, and you still have something." Reid held up a hand. "Except something's changed, and this isn't what you want, any more. You've had time to listen to her talk about _you_, and you don't like what you're hearing. Which means--"  
  
"This was a bad idea to begin with. Yeah, I'm getting that impression. I've had that impression, ever since I started thinking beyond just 'hey, I'm on a case, and there's a pretty girl, and she's into me'."  
  
Reid cleared his throat, tipped his head, and said nothing.  
  
"I blew this one, didn't I."  
  
"Depends on your definition. This was never going to be more than what she wants now, what she wanted _then_. And, to point out what you just said, what _you_ wanted then."  
  
"If I do this, I'm going to regret it, aren't I?"  
  
"Chaz? Not to point out the obvious, but you haven't done it yet, and you already regret it." Reid waited while Chaz groaned and sat up, hands following his face up as he leaned back, the toilet seat squeaking with the motion. "I'll remind you what you came up here to do. That's not the act of someone who wants what they've been offered."  
  
"I do want it," Chaz argued, hands still over his face as he knocked his head against the wall a few times for good measure. "That's the problem."  
  
"No, you _don't_." Reid held up a finger he knew Chaz couldn't see, but even now, they both knew it was there. "You want something that looks just enough like this to be causing problems. You want a long term relationship with a version of Mary who is less disturbed by _what _you are and what you've done in the past. I'm pretty sure she likes _who_ you are."  
  
"You're the one of us she was looking at, first," Chaz reminded him. "She thought she wanted _you_. Functionally, she _does_."  
  
"Langly still licked me first, _and _I'm not interested."  
  
Chaz's hands dropped into his lap, and he stared, cross-eyed at the ceiling for a little longer. Why was nothing ever easy? He could feel Reid watching him, from the other side of the narrow room, and there was no judgement in that gaze. There never was. Just such a complete and terrible understanding of how he'd gotten to this point. And considering he hadn't actually opened that box, he found himself curious where exactly Spencer had made this mistake. And he wasn't going to ask.  
  
But, there was one thing... "Spencer? Come here and kiss me?"  
  
Reid paused for a little too long. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."  
  
"I can be sure enough for both of us." Chaz folded his arms on the edge of the sink and rested his chin on them. "The usual methods aren't getting rid of this one, so I thought I'd go back to getting kissed by someone who actually gives seven-tenths of a shit about me and gives the best kisses I've ever had."  
  
"You know that only works because I know what you want as soon as you do..."  
  
"So, I'm getting entirely spoiled for the best things in life that are completely unavailable to people who aren't us." Chaz's eyebrows arced up. "Tell me we don't deserve it."  
  
"You know as well as I do that it's never been about what we deserve." Pulling himself up onto his knees, Reid offered Chaz a bottle from the bag under the sink. "Listerine, however, I'm going to insist on."  
  
Chaz grabbed the little bottle in both hands. "Why can't I fall in love with you?"  
  
Reid leaned back while Chaz thoroughly rinsed his mouth. "Because we overlap in the wrong places, and neither of us would sit still for that."  
  
"I hate that you're right."  
  
"I know." Tipping his head back, Reid let Chaz draw him closer in body and mind. "I'm still surprised we can get this close, that we can stand to be this close."  
  
"It's because we're _not _the same."  
  
The kiss was easy, in a way that so many things were, between them, and Chaz revelled in the fact that he remained pleasantly unsurprised by all of it. Sweet, first, because Spencer was always kind and gentle, so careful with him. Far more careful than he ever was with himself, and maybe there was a lesson there, somewhere. But, as he came to desire more, Spencer kept up with him, and his mind flooded with vivid recollections of what he'd interrupted, when he came in. His body ached with Spencer's pleasure, and less so, with a hundred tiny stupid bruises that wouldn't show up until tomorrow -- also Spencer's.  
  
But, it all swept through him like fresh water, in a way the actual water wouldn't have done, rinsing the disgust off the inside of his skin. He could almost be comfortable in it, again, to feel like the sensations of Spencer's skin against his own actually belonged to him.  
  
Why was nothing ever easy?  
  
_Maybe because you're looking in the wrong places for it, dumbass_.


	12. Chapter 12

"You know, he ran out of hot water ten minutes ago, and as much as I can see Chaz doing that to himself, I'm not sure Spencer would really put up with it, so..." Mary looked up at the ceiling from the chair she'd pulled over to the corner of the coffee table.  
  
"He's running the water so we won't hear them talking," Langly said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, not even looking up from the notes he'd taken while Mary was explaining what happened in town. "Are you fucking serious about the statues?"  
  
"Whitley said it like he meant it. You know what he looks like when he's pulling your leg." Mary reached for the stack of pages Reid had been flipping through earlier, eyeing the photos. "They really do look like us, huh?"  
  
"Yeah, it was bad enough when there was only one of me. Now look at all these freako clones with my face. I mean, it's going to be a lot easier to convince people I'm not me, once this breaks, but it still pisses me off." A wet, wrenching sound cut off whatever further ranting Langly meant to do, and he eyed the wall suspiciously. "How bad are the pipes in here? Every time somebody turns off the shower, I'm sure the ceiling's going to start pissing."  
  
"Not that bad." Mary shrugged. "You still probably want to get all of them replaced. The pressure's all fucked up from the laundry and the dishwasher, because you know Uncle Pete and paying anybody to do something he could halfass."  
  
"Christ," Langly muttered, rolling his eyes. "He's dead, and he's _still _a complete asshole."  
  
Mary looked up at the ceiling, anticipating footsteps that hadn't yet started. "Look, you're doing Chaz. How do I make this _not weird_?"  
  
Langly sputtered in horror for a few seconds. "How the hell would I know? The last time I checked, he was pretty into you, so you must've pissed him off pretty bad, and I have no idea how or what to do about it. I'm not the evil tw... uh... Hm. Okay, I'm not _his _evil twin, I'm _yours_. Maybe you should ask Reid. Hell, maybe you should ask _Byers_. He's pretty good at other people's relationships."  
  
"Are you seriously telling me he's worth all this bullshit? Because I'm starting to think I was right, the first time. You licked him, you can have him." Mary crossed her arms over her chest and her ankles under the table, and for a split second, Langly wondered if that was what he looked like to everyone else.  
  
"Hey, he's remarkably low-bullshit, with me, so... sounds like a personal problem."  
  
The front door closed again, and Langly jumped, twisting around on the sofa, as if he could see out the door and down the hall. Frohike's voice saved him the trouble.  
  
"Why the hell is there a bottle of milk in the hall?"  
  
"Oh shit!" Mary jumped up and ran to grab it, swinging around the living room doorframe with one hand. "Give me that! Where are the raisins? Shit, shit, shit! Chaz said he was baking a cake, and then he, ah... ran upstairs and shut himself in the bathroom, and I totally forgot to put that in the fridge for him. You know, maybe not the first thing on my mind."  
  
Byers raised his eyebrows as he brushed the snow off his coat, before taking it off. "Is he all right?"  
  
"Probably just too much coffee," Mary lied, not really wanting to have to explain the situation to anyone else. "I'm sure he'll be fine in a minute, but you might want to use the other bathroom for a few hours."  
  
"What the hell are the two of you doing coming in the front?" Langly asked, leaning around the doorway. "I was starting to think we were going to have to send out a search party. Is the barn really that interesting?"  
  
"Well, we had a look at the barn, and it's in pretty good shape, so we went to have a look at the chicken coop, and that's ... let's go with less good. Shed's got a hole in the roof, but it's not bad, yet. Your mom probably never noticed it. Smokehouse is in great shape." Frohike smiled slyly. "Any chance we can get one of those back home?"  
  
"Don't mind him," Byers sighed. "He's developed an obsession with meat."  
  
"Hey, if he can smoke a ham as good as Uncle Pete's, I'm in." Mary shrugged, stepping around Frohike with the raisins and cream, headed for the kitchen.  
  
"The fence, though. We gotta talk about the fence, Langly. I'm not sure this place even has one, any more. Not in the back, anyway." The look Frohike gave Langly said everything he hadn't. Without a good fence, there was really nothing between the house and the rest of the world. "I know I'm looking in the right place, because the posts are still there, but the fence just didn't make it, and the snow's too deep to guess what happened."  
  
"Aunt Helen took out some of the fence when she started leasing the back of the land to, ah... Caldwell? Hooper? Who's behind you?" Mary appeared in the kitchen doorway.  
  
"Miss Lorraine," Langly said, without so much as a thought.  
  
"Hooper." Mary nodded. "Anyway, the contract's voided because she died, but she's dead, so you might want to give notice before you put the fence back up, if you get what I'm saying."  
  
Langly rolled his eyes. "... You're telling me the neighbours have been using the land without asking, because nobody _lives _here, even if you do own it. Did."  
  
"My _parents _owned it," Mary reminded him. "And it's not like they'd have said no, but they probably would have re-negotiated the contract, if they had any idea. But, as long as the Hoopers didn't talk about it, nobody was going to say anything."  
  
"In which case, they can go to hell," Langly decided. "I'd be more sympathetic, but they always had more pasture than we did, _anyway_. And somebody pull the survey lines, because I want to make sure that fence is in the right place, so we don't have to do it twice. ... Somebody. _Me_. Right." He rolled his eyes and flicked his fingers, already onto the next subject as he looted the county database. "And I want infrared cameras and motion sensors, because we're starting some shit, and I'd rather not end up like the last of the clinic crew."  
  
"Most of those were car accidents," Byers pointed out, stepping back when Langly pinned him with a glare.  
  
"Not a hell of a lot we can do about the car if it's parked in public, but we have to sleep some time, Byers. Plus, not all of them were car accidents. Disappearances? Heart attacks? No one has ever, and I mean _ever_, gotten in to somewhere we were living, unless we let them in, and you know it. And right now, we're living here, and this house has a lot of windows."  
  
"He's right," Frohike said, after a moment's reflection. "But, we can't just hire a bunch of contractors to come out and secure the place. People are going to talk, in a town this size. People are already talking."  
  
"You can get away with the fence, and probably some light security," Mary said, nodding slowly. "Nobody's going to be surprised about somebody coming in to fix the fence, especially after what happened with the barn. You're just taking care of the property and a problem everyone for two towns in any direction knows about. You might even be able to get the wires run for motion sensors like that -- nobody's going to think much of it when the sheriff's got an eye on this place -- but it's the middle of winter, so you're going to have to run the wires overland. There's no way you're getting a shovel into that dirt, in this weather."  
  
"And a plumber. Somebody needs to do something about dad's friggin' Rube Goldberg plumbing before we have an accident."  
  
Reid appeared at the bottom of the stairs, this time in slippers instead of socks. "Did I hear someone mention the sheriff, because I have a question about the sheriff."  
  
"Why has this epic jackass wanted to flush my face down the toilet since we were twelve?" Langly guessed, rolling his eyes.  
  
"No, why does Saltville _have _a sheriff?" Reid looked down the people-lined hall. "I was going to go sit down, but... Is there something wrong with the living room?"  
  
Langly looked behind himself and up. "Nah, ceiling hasn't come down, yet. Pipes probably haven't started leaking... yet." As he looked back into the hall he realised the problem and stepped back into the room, heading for the couch. "Yeah, so, we have a sheriff because... it's a long story."  
  
Mary picked it up as she followed him in, taking back her chair before anyone else could claim it. "You've probably noticed they don't have municipal utilities out here, for the most part. We have proper services out in _Benedict_, but not in Saltville, because some jerkass town founder got into a fight with the state government. Saltville's on its own for all the state-funded services, and it's written into the town laws that no resident of Saltville can acquire services, paid or free, from the State of Nebraska."  
  
"Telephone's private industry, so the main office down in York ran a line up when they started trying to sell phone service up here," Langly said, nodding. "And we're actually getting power from... shit, it's not Benedict, is it? There's a privately owned coal-burning plant somewhere out here in the boonies. First people to supply electric to farmers, but I think all the electric's private, now. I don't know. I haven't been here in years." Langly shrugged and put his feet up on the corner of the table as everyone else filed into the room, Reid taking the seat just next to him. "And the town owns the water towers, but most of us are on wells anyway. But, we're stuck providing our own cops and fire. York County Sheriff doesn't have jurisdiction, for like... five miles around the edge of town. That's all Saltville."  
  
"How the hell is that even legal, in this day and age?" Frohike asked, stunned and confused.  
  
"It's probably not." Mary shrugged. "But, nobody's really challenged it lately. Last time was before I was born."  
  
"Before _I_ was born." Langly nodded. "This place has always been a little weird. Anyway, yeah, that's how Sheriff Douchebag doesn't answer to the county. He'll answer to the FBI, though."  
  
"Technically, we'd answer to him, if it were his jurisdiction we were investigating. Which it's ... not. Quite." While all the eyes in the room were elsewhere, Chaz had appeared in the doorway, looking wary and somewhat damp. "Which is probably for the best, though I'm not sure how we're going to get ourselves invited to Lincoln."  
  
Reid tipped his head back to look past Langly. "The obvious way, though you're not going to like it. We're going to say he invited us into an investigation in Saltville that extends to Lincoln. He'll agree to it."  
  
Chaz shot him a wry look. "Because he had a crush on Miss Helen."  
  
"You shut up about my mom!" Langly barked, jabbing a finger at Chaz.  
  
"I'm not talking about your mom. I'm talking about Harding. You have to remember Mary and I spent like an hour convincing him to support the investigation." Chaz finally came into the room and sat on the arm of the couch next to Byers, putting as many people as possible between himself and Mary. "And he _does_ support the investigation, because he had a crush on your mom. I do not want to know that, but I do know. It's the woo-woo spooky profiler skills again."  
  
He was not admitting he'd read Harding's mind. Not... much, just enough to keep an eye on where that conversation was going, and whether it was having the desired effect. It wasn't a conversation he wanted to have in front of Mary.  
  
"He's right," Reid agreed, cutting off whatever it was Langly had opened his mouth to say. "And we're not saying your mother was even aware of it. Just that he probably found her attractive, at some point in his life, and it was enough for him to want to defend her honour, now. Because that's how he sees this. He sees this as the clinic having wronged your mother, and he wants to use whatever resources he can to see the people responsible punished for it."  
  
Langly held up a finger an inch from Reid's face, and just looked grim for a few moments. "That's fucked up. That's my mom."  
  
Mary cleared her throat. "I mean, _technically_..."  
  
The finger swung around to jab at Mary. "Fuck you; she's _my mom_!"  
  
"I wish she was still alive," Chaz muttered under his breath, "because now I have questions about his initial exposure. Everyone in town thinks this woman was a saint."  
  
"Not everyone," Mary pointed out. "There were still rumours that Dick wasn't Uncle Pete's kid."  
  
"Well, they were _right_," Langly huffed, throwing himself against the back of the couch and folding his arms. "I'm _not_. Just not the way anyone thought."  
  
"So..." Chaz cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. "I got a call, while I was upstairs. The clinic _was _being looked at, in the eighties."  
  
Reid leaned forward to look around Byers. "Then why didn't Garcia--"  
  
"Because it wasn't federal. Sol Todd was a master of finding weird shit and sticking his nose where it didn't belong." Chaz's lips curled in something that might have been a smile, his eyes gleaming triumphantly. "And years later, he brought what he had to Stephen Reyes, at the Bureau, but there was no clinic there, any more."  
  
"How the hell does that help?" Langly demanded. "I already know he didn't write about it. I'd have found that."  
  
"No, he didn't. But, he still has his notes, and I'll have them in a few hours, once he finds them. He already typed it all up for Reyes." Chaz grinned. "He has interviews with people who are now dead. He had most of an article, and didn't run it, because he couldn't quite figure out what was going on, and nobody was going to buy it without a hook."  
  
"Where the hell were we, when this was going on?" Frohike asked, looking around the room.  
  
"I think I was punching you in the face, in Baltimore, at the time," Langly muttered. "Wait, was I? What year was that?"  
  
"He's not sure, but it's shortly before the clinic closed, so you're not far off."  
  
"Another reason the clinic might have closed." Mary kicked Langly in the ankle, shoving his feet off the table, and put her own feet on that corner.  
  
"Take your damn shoes--" Langly looked down and saw only socks. "Fine. Whatever. Clinic closing because the infamous -- and he was pretty infamous by then -- Solomon Todd was getting up in their shit. Yeah. I'd buy it. Still, if it was that, why's _he_ still alive?"  
  
"Because he's completely and justifiably paranoid. I mean, why are _you _still alive? Journalistic paranoia at its finest." Chaz shrugged.  
  
Langly sat up straighter, neck first. "Did you just compare me to Solomon Todd in a flattering fashion?" He shot Mary a sidelong look. "Screw you. I licked him. He's mine."  
  
Chaz could only hope he didn't look quite as relieved as he felt.


	13. Chapter 13

The smell of cooling cake wafted in from the kitchen, and Chaz was insistent he wasn't going to assemble the thing until it had cooled completely. This, of course, led to no end of huffing and muttering, particularly from Langly. But, the conversation was firmly on cake, still, when the email Chaz had been waiting for finally came in.  
  
Duke had a way of naming files, and for reasons he'd never admit, Chaz was pretty good at deciphering them, and as he skimmed down the list of documents, unpacking them, he spotted something and opened it out of order. After a moment, he looked up from his laptop. "Hey, Frank? It's after you left."  
  
"How the hell would you know? Did you check the police report?" Langly twisted sideways, jamming himself into the corner of the couch, legs draped over Reid's knees.  
  
"No, I found Duke's interview with your mom. She says so." Chaz turned the laptop around and passed it across Reid.  
  
"Question: So, your son was a result of your treatments at The Family Way?" Langly read the first question at the top of the screen out loud, and then the answer. "Answer: My son is everything I hoped for, and so much more than we can ever hope to understand. But, that's how it is with children, isn't it, Mr Todd? He would never have been possible without Dr Granger's incredible patience and commitment to giving us the family we always wanted. But, Dick... I know it's been hard for him, and I just hope he comes home." He looked like he might swallow his lips as he shoved the laptop at Byers, who had pulled in a chair from the kitchen. "Read this for me, Byers, because I'm pretty sure I'm losing my mind."  
  
Byers eyed Langly with no small amount of concern, as he accepted Chaz's laptop. Still, after thirty years, he knew enough not to ask. "Question: Do you think his troubles had anything to do with Dr Granger's work? Answer: No. No, it wasn't like that. Dr Granger warned us that in a small number of cases, the children ... well, they didn't come out right, but that happens anyway. But, Dick was just fine. He's just... a teenager. That's all. He's very smart, and the boys in town don't like that. And I'll be honest with you, Mr Todd, I don't know where that mind came from. His father and I are just farmers from a long line of farmers. Sure, we're handy, but our boy's something else. He'll send a man to Mars, one day."  
  
"Send a man to Mars, huh? Sounds like you're a little behind," Frohike teased.  
  
"Put a sock in it, Frohike." Langly jammed his hands under his arms and closed his eyes, listening to Byers. "Next question?"  
  
"Question: This is all very new and exciting science. Can you tell me a little more about the procedure?" Byers gave Reid a long look and flicked his eyes to Langly, before he went on. "Answer: Oh, it's not so new as all that. We've been doing almost the same thing with cows forever. But, somewhere, some man who's never worked on a farm had to try everyone's patience while he proved it was safe to mix sperm and eggs in a little dish and then put that in a person, instead of in a cow."  
  
Reid put a hand on Langly's leg as that thigh started to twitch against his own.  
  
"Question: So, it's not a donor for either side? It's just you and your husband? Answer: Oh, sure. When they mix it in the dish, they can make sure it mixes right before they put it in, so it just takes some of the guessing out. We still had to try a few times before it took, but only a few. Not like trying on our own! We'd been trying for years, but within a year with Dr Granger's help, we got one that stuck, and that's our son, god bless him wherever he is."  
  
Langly's lips were pale and thin, even more than they usually were, and the muscle of his jaw bulged like he'd break his teeth if they clenched any tighter.  
  
"Question: You mentioned that some of the children weren't as lucky as your son, that they 'didn't come out right'. What did you mean by that? Answer: Oh, just that Dr Granger wanted us to know it wouldn't necessarily prevent certain... defects. And there was a slightly higher chance our baby might be underweight or born a little early. And that was the truth! We were expecting him at Halloween, and that spindly little thing came kicking his way out two whole weeks early! Like he couldn't wait to fight the world. Ever since he was born, he was like that. And always, always hungry, but Dr Granger said that was normal for underweight babies. That boy could never eat enough."  
  
"Ah, hey, Langly? How long have you been a hacker?" Chaz raised his eyebrows and shot a look down the couch.  
  
"Long enough. Come on, I wasn't _weird_ until Allie started trying to rattle my brains." Langly kept his eyes shut, one leg now bouncing in a steady rhythm against Reid's knees.  
  
"I'm not so sure about that..."  
  
Langly's leg stilled as his eyes shot open, glaring down the couch at Chaz. "We were living on ramen and hot dogs, and not a lot of either one. I'd have been dead."  
  
"Or you just didn't _have_ a passive ability, or at least not one that was always on, like mine. Or Hafs, really. She came to it later and it really did a number on her, but I've always thought of the two of you as being... Yeah, this is the part where I admit I don't know enough about computers, but I really think you just weren't always on."  
  
"Besides," Frohike said, after a moment's contemplation, "didn't we say if you turned beta as an adult, it was back in eighty-nine? Susanne and the warehouse full of mind-control gas? You'd have been just as much a beta through the ramen and hot dogs years, either way."  
  
"You've gained weight, since then. We all have," Byers pointed out.  
  
"I think we need to go to Lincoln." Reid gently squeezed Langly's thigh. "I think we need to start the interviews tomorrow."  
  
"You do wireless. Do you also do radio?" Chaz asked Langly.  
  
"No, and I don't want to. What are you--" A realisation smacked the expression off Langly's face. "The car."  
  
"My dad." Byers nodded. "It's a valid concern, especially given the trend toward car 'accidents' among the clinic staff."  
  
"I have a thing about car wrecks. Too many in not enough time." Chaz rubbed the back of his neck.  
  
"You'd think that might make you drive like less of a maniac," Frohike muttered.  
  
"I wasn't driving, but it wouldn't have helped anyway." Chaz shook his head. "Bad case. Years ago. Still a little touchy about car wrecks, but if we're going to Lincoln, _I'm driving_. Most things short of ... that, I can probably handle."  
  
"Your freaky puke-inducing CIA driving skills aren't going to save us from a car bomb," Langly huffed, just to be difficult.  
  
"Fortunately, I haven't spotted a car bomb or any other explosives in connection with the clinic or its staff." Byers sounded just a little too cheerful. "So, I wouldn't worry too much about that! Just the usual brake failures and blown tires..."  
  
"As far as we know." Chaz picked up Reid's coffee, without thinking about it, and finished the cup, before realising it was hot chocolate. "Taking my advice, I see. That was unexpected."  
  
"That's why you should get your own coffee." Reid shot him an exasperated look. "If we're going to talk to the parents, first, who needs to be there, and whose authority are we claiming?"  
  
"ACTF," Chaz volunteered. "It's our case, and even the local office isn't going to say too much. We're one of those weird corners of the Bureau nobody wants to talk about, so they won't catch any weird case blowback. We give people _my_ card, and nobody's we don't want to talk to is going to touch us with a forty-foot cattle prod. We should probably take at least one of the clones, though."  
  
"Both of the clones," Reid agreed. "Still not sure how we're going to make that work, but we probably do want the impact."  
  
"Hey, Langly." Frohike waited until Langly stopped glaring irritatedly into space. "You trust me not to burn down the house, while you're gone?"  
  
"Not really, but you should probably start calling around for a plumber anyway. If anything happens to the floor in here, I'm putting someone in the hospital, and I'm not real picky where I start."  
  
"Which means you'll be first, Langly." Byers rolled his eyes. "After thirty years of watching you pick fights you can't finish, I'm pretty sure of that."  
  
"Nobody asked for your opinion, Byers," Langly snapped with more heat than anyone expected. He looked surprised, but not apologetic.  
  
Reid offered Byers an apologetic look, but Byers just shook his head, as if he should've expected it. And given the interview still on the screen in his lap, and the fact that Langly _never_ talked about his family, he was pretty sure he should have.  
  
Chaz held up a finger and looked around the room. "If nobody minds, I'd like to stop in York and drop off the rental. I'd like to swap it for something a little more useful on frozen dirt roads, if we're going to be here a while, which it looks like we are. Falkner's threatening to send me Lau, if I don't pull this together soon, but I told her I'd take Duke, first. At least he's worked this one, before."  
  
Reid looked faintly amused. "And then you got the speech about the number of badges, and reminded her I was here, right?"  
  
Chaz nodded. "She does want me back, though. _Both_ of us out of the office is apparently a bit of a strain."  
  
"Garcia and Lewis can do most of what I can, as far as the majority of cases go," Reid admitted, after a moment. "They just haven't realised it, yet. Of course, if they do, I'm probably out of a job, so maybe it's best they haven't."  
  
"Why would anyone fire you? You're good at your job, even if someone else could also do it." Byers stopped skimming the interview and shot Reid a curious look.  
  
"Public relations," Chaz answered. "Our local hero has a lot of scandal in his jacket."  
  
"I should never have been a field agent in the first place. Rules were very, _very_ seriously bent for me, in the beginning. Different rules are being bent, now. I'm in an extremely precarious position, and the only reason I still have my job is that no one can figure out how to replace me."  
  
"And because your team _likes you_," Chaz pointed out, elbowing Reid. "Come on, you don't think upper management came to the conclusion you were irreplaceable on their own, did you?"  
  
Reid closed his eyes and tipped his head back. "No, I know you're right. I just... _They_ should not be bearing the weight of my failures."  
  
Langly kneed him in the chest at an entirely awkward angle. "They're not. They're protecting you from a threat. It's pack behaviour. You'd do the same thing -- you _have _done the same thing. Pulled your file the day after we met, remember? Read a bunch of your cases? They're holding on to you because they think you're one of them. Got the shotgun speech from three of them in like two hours? I do know what I'm talking about?"  
  
Chaz rested his head on Reid's shoulder. "Let go of it, Spencer. Sometimes you're wrong, and this is one of those times."  
  
"And how well did it work the last time Hafidha said that to you?" Reid drawled, staring cross-eyed at the ceiling.  
  
"Yeah, okay. Point." Chaz muffled an amused sound against Reid's shoulder. "Back to the point of this discussion, going to York, switching cars, going to Lincoln. Do we talk to the people Duke already talked to, first?"  
  
"I think we do," both Langlys said at the same time, and then eyed each other suspiciously.  
  
"Is that more or less creepy than when we do it?" Reid asked, still not sitting back up.  
  
"More," Chaz decided almost instantly. "They're not reading each other's minds."  
  
"We should go to the people who talked about it before," Langly said, ignoring the conversation next to him. "We know they've been willing to talk about it in the past, and like, not even to feds, to a _journalist_."  
  
"Of course, the clinic was still open, then," Mary reminded him. "We don't know what kind of wild-ass bullshit these people might've been threatened with, once it shut down."  
  
Byers looked from one Langly to the other, marvelling yet again at how similar they really seemed, and he wondered, not for the first time, how many of the clones, if they were clones, would have similar behaviours, and how much of it was that no matter what they were born, these two were raised as Langlys. "If they're even still alive. A lot of the parents would be your parents' age, and ... we're not young, Langly. Add to that the fact that an inordinate number of people connected to the clinic are dead..."  
  
Langly rolled his eyes. "My mom died of natural causes, inside the last decade. Whoever's responsible isn't picking off patients."  
  
"My mom's still alive," Mary reminded them all. "And Whitley's calling my parents, pretty soon, here. Which means they're probably going to call me, so I don't hear it the long way around."  
  
"I've voiced this objection before, but I just don't see bringing ... _Frank_ to see your parents being a good idea." Chaz kept his face mashed against Reid's shoulder, just not to have to look at anyone, which was definitely a sign he needed a vacation. The vacation he was supposed to be having right then, that had somehow turned into the weirdest shit he'd stepped into in a while. "Maybe once we find another clone we're sure of, though..."  
  
Mary snorted. "Dick has to stay dead or my dad'll kill him. But, once we've got at least one other verified clone, walking in with two of Dick will make neither of them Dick."  
  
"Leaving both Saltville and Benedict Dickless." Langly nodded. "Parents first. If they didn't use the clinic, then their kids won't be clones, and they're more likely to believe us because ... well, look at us. We pretty much _are_ their kids."  
  
"You really _are_," Byers gave Langly a long, round-eyed look.  
  
Frohike finished the thought. "Fifteen matches, ten working in science and engineering fields, five in writing and writing-adjacent fields. They really are you. They just had different parents."  
  
Langly rolled his eyes. "Well, they're fucking clones, Frohike. That's how that works."  
  
"Ah, spare thought, guys..." Reid held up a hand and looked at Byers. "Anyone checked the names we have against the names Todd had, for where they _don't_ match? We may not be looking at the only phenotype."


	14. Chapter 14

Three of them were in the car they'd just picked up. Langly had handled the reservation, with his usual finesse, screwing around with it until they got to the counter, so no one else would get to screw with their car before they picked it up. And this one was, he'd admit, an improvement over the land yacht Frohike picked last time. He'd never understood what the hell it was with Frohike and big, black cars. And while this was definitely big and black, it totally screamed 'FBI', rather than 'mortuary attendant'. It also had four-wheel drive and snow tires, and Villette seemed to be able to pay a little less attention to driving, or maybe that was just because they were on the highway, which was a hell of a lot less icy.  
  
"So, what the hell is going on with you and my cousin?" Langly asked from the back seat, where he was sprawled across he whole of it with his laptop open, barely looking at the screen as he pulled background info on the parents Todd had interviewed and pushed it to Reid's tablet. He'd finally gotten his hands on the thing, after a long argument about the penalties for misusing Bureau resources, and set it up for text to speech, as well as some other things, so Reid was in the passenger seat with his eyes closed, listening to the data as it came in.  
  
"Not actually your business," Chaz shot back, wishing he had a good reason to suddenly change lanes, but the road stretched on ahead like an endless black ribbon, barely spotted with other cars. Apparently, everyone else in Nebraska had the sense not to drive in this garbage.  
  
"Yeah, I'd have agreed with you right up until yesterday afternoon. She just made it my business, and I think there's a lot more going on here than she's telling me, and for once in my life, I have the sense to ask what the hell is going on before I stick my foot in it up to my neck, because I'm pretty sure that's what I'm looking at. This is not going to end in any way I like, and probably not any way you like, if I don't know what the hell to say to her, because I don't think 'sounds like a personal problem' is going to move this situation in a good direction."  
  
"The short answer is I'm not as interested as I thought I was, and I refuse to be treated like a used dildo."  
  
Langly blinked and shifted just enough to catch Chaz's eye in the rearview mirror. "... _What?_"  
  
"She's still hung up that you got to me first. And more than that, she's got a bug up her ass about a few other things that I can't really do anything about, and I can't say I really _ever_ want her to find out exactly what kind of 'freaky superpowers' I actually have. You took it well--"  
  
"Screw you, I did not."  
  
"Yeah, Frank, you kind of did. Reasonable response to an unreasonable intrusion. Completely my fault. And you didn't take a swing at me." Chaz's eyes flicked to Langly's in the mirror, and then back to the road. "You took it _surprisingly _well. I have every reason to believe she's not going to. And again, only once, and that was because I was doing my job, and I thought she was a serial killer. Which is... not a great start to a relationship anyway, but we got past it. On some level, anyway."  
  
"She knows you read minds, Villette. I told her that in your living room," Langly reminded him. "You were siting right there."  
  
"I don't think she really absorbed it. Not for what it actually was." Chaz stopped his hand as it went for the radio. _Don't put on music while Spencer's listening to backgrounds and interviews. That's not going to end well._ None of this was going to end well, and he knew it. "One of these days, though, it's going to sink in that you weren't kidding, and I don't really want to deal with it. I _really _don't want that to be the realisation that cracks her. The last few months have been stressful, and this case isn't really helping."  
  
"This case wouldn't even exist without her."  
  
"It took two of you to make it happen. Any two of you would've worked, but we needed at least two, and a reason to suspect something might be wrong." Chaz reached across Reid for the glovebox, before realising he hadn't put anything in it yet. Before he could say anything, a Twinkie landed in his lap, from behind.  
  
"Yeah, I know what you're looking for, but your bag's in the trunk, and mine's not."  
  
"It should bother me that you know me that well, already," Chaz sighed, picking up the Twinkie in one hand and tearing open the wrapper with his teeth. "But, after Fitzgerald, I can't really be as surprised as I should be."  
  
"Yeah, well, that's what happens. You scrape me off the floor a few times, and I get smarter." Langly scoffed and then swore at the intermittent signal. One of these days, he was going to have to figure out how Hafs built her own connections and hijack that skill. "At least I'm not always on, like you."  
  
"You should still be eating something more than pure sugar with the amount of network fuckery you've been doing. Trust me, I tried to make a call while you were sleeping, I know how bad it really is out here."  
  
"What, you think Byers isn't feeding me enough meat?"  
  
Chaz gave him a long, slow look in the rearview.  
  
"_Anyway_, back to you and my identical cousin..." Langly sank back down in the seat, trying to get his face out of view until he dealt with the fact he'd walked right into that one. "If she asks me _again _how to get in your pants, I tell her to stop trying?"  
  
"You tell her to listen to me."  
  
"Because she's been doing such a great fucking job of that." Langly rolled his eyes, grabbing at the next cel tower. The snow was not helping. "... What did you tell her?"  
  
"I told her I thought it was a bad idea." Chaz's eyes flicked to the mirror and didn't find Langly. "Twice."  
  
"Okay, so, I should probably wait until you're not driving to say this, but I trust you not to drive into a post, if you turn around to punch me in the face." Langly swallowed and slid down a little further, just to make that punch in the face a bit more difficult to deliver. "You were pretending to be her boyfriend for a few hours there. And we both know you're good at what you do. Are you completely sure you didn't--"  
  
"Yes. Yes, I'm completely sure. It takes a certain amount of effort and concentration to put a thought into someone else's head, as opposed to the lack of concentration that lets me see what other people are... thinking about." Worried about and afraid of, most often, if he was honest about it, which he wasn't going to be, right that moment. Being tired always brought the worst in first.  
  
"Okay, but... doesn't that mean if you actually exerted a certain amount of effort and concentration you could just _fix this_ and not make it my problem?"  
  
"It isn't your problem, Frank. It really isn't."  
  
Reid's eyes opened and he took a moment to figure out how to stop the text to speech reading. "Okay, does someone want to tell me why even I, with my eyes closed, can feel the tension in here?"  
  
"No," they both said, at the same time.  
  
"If it's not his problem, it's definitely not your problem," Chaz said, unhelpfully, wishing he'd just gone back to Virginia, and knowing that would've been a horrible idea. At least as bad as staying.  
  
"Chaz, do you have any idea how loud you are, right now? The door is closed. You've been keeping it closed. And you're so loud I can't concentrate, but because you have the door closed, _I can't tell why_." Reid raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his seat, fingers easing the release back until it was where he wanted it. "Pretty sure you just made it my business. You definitely just made it my headache."  
  
Chaz took what should have been a controlled breath, but it still came out in a huff. "Fine. First of all, I'm incredibly sorry--"  
  
"Which is not something you needed to tell me," Reid snapped, as the pain got worse. "I know you've been going almost non-stop since you got sent out on the case you came here from. You need rest a lot more than I need an apology for something you're too tired to control."  
  
"Mary. We're talking about Mary." Chaz wondered how hard it would be to get himself a separate room, so he wouldn't have to have this conversation again. Because it was going to happen again. She was going to join them that afternoon, and somebody was going to say something, and some new and horrifying version of this conversation would happen.  
  
"He was trying not to tell me why he can't just make my cousin stop hitting on him, if he doesn't want her to," Langly drawled from the back seat.  
  
"Because it's rude? I mean, you really want a good reason, that's the top of the list." Chaz still couldn't see Langly in the rearview, and he knew that was on purpose.  
  
"Like her coming to me after you told her no twice wasn't rude?"  
  
"How about the part where it's dangerous? Where I don't know what kind of lasting effects that's going to have. Where I can't even be sure that's the only thing I'm going to suppress? Something inconsequential? That's easy. That doesn't even matter, most of the time. There's nothing else to hit, on the way in. But, when you start screwing around with someone's desires and emotions... I can't be responsible for that again. I can't do that to someone. It's _wrong_." This time, Chaz reached up and adjusted the mirror until he could see Langly. There wasn't anyone behind him for miles. "And no, I'm not enjoying the experience, but I'm going to deal with it the same way any normal, reasonable grown-ass adult would."  
  
"All I'm hearing is the lack of an 'other' in that last sentence," Langly pointed out.  
  
"It's because he's neither normal nor reasonable, but he'd like to be," Reid muttered, eyes squeezed shut and a hand stretched across them. With his other hand, he pointed first to Chaz and then toward the space between the seats. "You need to either open the door or put that back in a box. And _you _need to hand me your drink."  
  
"You don't want _my _drink, you want this," Langly said, pressing a can into Reid's hand. "What I'm drinking would be even less good for _you_. And way the hell too cold to drink as fast as you probably want to."  
  
"Is this Jolt?" Reid asked, not even waiting for the answer before he opened the can, holding it under the dashboard and between his legs, just in case it didn't open as cleanly as he hoped, and still not opening his eyes.  
  
"... Maybe. You have a migraine. I can see it from here. And we're not going to be able to get any coffee for at least another fifteen minutes."  
  
Reid paused, trying to focus, against the strain in his head that felt like everything from mid-eyesocket up might wrench off at the slightest provocation and the sudden wave of Chaz's distress and self-loathing that flooded into the last spaces in his head that weren't already overflowing with pain. Still, the idea that Langly might have inadvertently picked up one of Chaz's talents floated to the surface. "What do you mean you can _see it_?"  
  
"I mean Villette needs to turn off the heat, and you should take your jacket off and pop your neck, because I can see your pulse in your eyelid." Langly twisted around and pressed a startlingly cold and damp hand against Reid's forehead. "Drink the Jolt and give me that Twinkie wrapper. I can try to put some ice in it, so you don't die in the twenty minutes between here and a dark room."  
  
"Chaz? When we get to the hotel, you are going to sleep, and I am going to drink coffee until we're both functional human beings, again." Reid took a few long, shaky breaths, letting Chaz's background noise become intelligible and then drain away. There was something else in there, this time, a face he'd never seen before, a place he hadn't been shown. And the crushing weight of guilt, grief, and the price of necessity.  
  
He could just barely make out Chaz's voice past the nearly overwhelming urge to vomit up his lungs and liver, at least some of which was probably the result of drinking a carbonated beverage this quickly, but not all of it.  
  
"Frank? Call Mary and tell her we won't need her until tomorrow, after all. I don't think we're in good enough shape to do this, today."  
  
"I just need an iced coffee and an hour or two in the dark," Reid argued, dizzily, looking paler than he had the last time he'd been shot. "It's not that bad. I can--"  
  
"I can't," Chaz decided, for both of them. "This has waited thirty years. It'll wait another day."


	15. Chapter 15

Reid lay sprawled across one of the beds, a bag of ice under his neck and Langly's thumbs chasing the ache in his skull. It was almost better. It was going away. Another few minutes like this, and he thought he'd fall asleep. And really, he had no idea how the hell Langly's patience had held up this long -- no lights, no sound, far more distance than usual between them. But, then, Langly was probably doing unspeakable things with the hotel wireless, and Reid could feel a little better about the situation.  
  
Chaz was by himself in the other bed, sleeping as best he could, and Reid had managed to do away with the nightmares almost as fast as they came on. And he'd be over the headache already if he hadn't been doing it-- no. Reid knew that wasn't true at all. The headache was some physical manifestation of the stress they were both under, and if that was going to stop, Chaz needed enough sleep to handle himself. At least none of the dreams were particularly difficult, this time, which concerned Reid quite a bit. An abundance of little things could be worse than one dramatic nightmare, but it didn't feel crushing, the way that usually did. It felt strangely hollow, as if these little displeasures were merely presaging something greater. The pressure still hung between them like a storm yet to break, and Reid wished it would, because whatever the consequences, it would be better than this.  
  
He rolled his cheek into Langly's palm and tipped his head to kiss the tips of those fingers. He knew better than to get used to having someone take care of him, that it would just be that much more horrible when he was alone again, but he loved the way Langly just... _knew_. Langly never treated him like glass, just made a few practical adjustments, asked if he wanted anything, and went back to whatever he'd been doing in the first place. Langly wasn't _disruptive_. Which was a little strange, because Langly was well known for being loud and overdramatic, but Reid could just about pinpoint the difference, the line between cold practicality, warm practicality, and Langly flipping out entirely.  
  
A smile crept across his face, in the dark, followed by the uncomfortable sense that it was dark, and he'd be turning a light on as soon as he was sure it wasn't going to feel like getting stabbed in the eye. And then the next wave of Chaz's nightmares broke, and this time, it felt different, as if this might not be some amalgam of terrors, but an actual representation of a single event. A _memory_, instead of a fear.  
  
The first thing that caught Reid's attention was the hospital room, and the tubes and wires that Chaz obviously barely tolerated against skin that didn't feel like his own. His wrists were too thin, thinner than Reid had seen them, and the skin that might not belong to either of them was some sick, sallow colour, flaking over the joints. And buried under it all was some animal panic, like a cornered dog.  
  
_Coyote_, something between them corrected.  
  
And a deep rage that had something? nothing? barely anything to do with his condition spilled out of Chaz's mouth. Reid could feel it, but he couldn't hear it until halfway through a sentence, when Chaz's eyes lit on the other person in the room.  
  
"-- and when you wake up alive, tomorrow, you'd better get down on your knees and thank god."  
  
"Thank god or thank _you_?" Reyes asked, and that was _unmistakeably _Stephen Reyes, if a little older and tireder than Reid remembered him being.  
  
"Right now, I'm not sure there's a difference." Chaz waited until Reyes's urge to commit him had almost solidified. "Neither of us are real."  
  
And Reid could feel both the truth and the lie in that last. No, Chaz didn't feel real. He'd somehow lost touch with himself, almost entirely, and how was still in some unmarked box, buried under the pile of things they weren't talking about. But, that hadn't been the point. The point had been exactly what Reyes had taken it to be. Chaz had come into some power he tried not to think about, and had used it to ... possibly save Reyes's life? It was impossible to tell, in a nightmare. The fundamentals were accurate, but the edges got strange.  
  
A flash shot across the backs of their eyes. Reyes's sick dread, his sense of failure, his view of Chaz's nearly skull-thin face, framed in a few inches of greasy white and silver hair.  
  
There was a reason this had come back up, now, and Reid wasn't sure if it was actually related to anything happening, or if this was just something else the unsub in Midland had knocked loose. But, the pressure was up, and he thought his ears might pop if he didn't do something about it. Whatever had been lurking just out of reach was closer, now, and Reid braced himself against it. Chaz had to become aware of it, but Reid didn't think it needed to stay. Not on its own terms.  
  
The smell hit first -- sweat and fermentation, sick-sweet and foul. Then the house came into focus -- an actual house, not just an apartment, to judge by the windows. The blue-flowered wallpaper, the whale-blue carpet, a leather sofa they were not discussing how he got. It was his house -- _Chaz's_ house. That hadn't come up in Langly's background check. There was no house; just the condo he lived in with Hafidha. But, the woman who walked in was definitely not Hafidha, not with her honey-gold hair and peaches-and-cream skin. She was smartly dressed, in a green suit with a skirt that stopped just below the knee, revealing stockings -- and Chaz's memory said those were definitely stockings and not pantyhose -- that just barely darkened her skin.  
  
The ache in their chest nearly made Reid vomit. He couldn't get his mind around what was so wrong, here, but Chaz's guilt was stifling, his grief crushing. But, the woman smiled at them, and Reid instantly knew who she was.  
  
'_Did you love her?_' he'd asked, and Chaz had said he didn't know.  
  
A shift in the pressure, and Reid could feel the scene begin to slip into nightmare territory. Genuine nightmare. He could feel the fear thickening the air, twisting it, the woman's face growing as sick and thin as Chaz's had been in the scene before it -- another gamma? He pushed himself into the dream, flesh and blood and warmth, an echo of a living thing.  
  
"It's time to wake up, Chaz. Look at me. This isn't real."  
  
He didn't realise he'd spoken aloud until Langly tapped on his forehead.  
  
"You okay?" A pause. "_He _okay?"  
  
"We will be. Why don't you run out and get dinner? You must be starving, and he's going to wake up hungry."  
  
Langly picked up the undertone immediately. "He's not okay, and you don't want me to see it."  
  
"He's so not okay he doesn't even want _me _to see it," Reid admitted, half listening with one ear, as he continued trying to lead Chaz back out of the dream that wound around them, caught on memories Reid didn't even recognise, a whole section of Chaz's life that had never come up, before. "And the point stands -- you both need to eat."  
  
"So do you," Langly reminded him. "Real food or burgers?"  
  
"Burgers," Reid decided after a moment. "Fast is more important, right now."  
  
"Half a box of Twinkies in my bag," Langly reminded him, carefully trying to extract his legs from under Reid's head, and replace them with a pillow. "If I come back, and you're both drooling zombies, I'm gonna be pissed about it."  
  
"So am I," Reid breathed, before he managed to frame up a more reassuring answer. "It's just a nightmare. We'll be fine."  
  
"He's having a nervous breakdown, and it's taken you completely out of commission," Langly snapped, pulling on his shoes.  
  
"I do just ... have migraines. You know that. There's a good chance I was going to have one anyway, and this just made it come on faster." Reid rubbed his face, tiredly. "Thankfully, it's also going away faster, so I'm a little short on complaints, right now." He paused. "And Langly? _Please _be careful. I'm-- I know we haven't officially started investigating, here, but ..."  
  
"Hey, I look like nine other people in Lincoln. Nobody's going to know." It was about then that Langly realised he wasn't sure where Chaz had put the car keys, and the faint hint of light leaking in around the curtains wasn't enough to make them reflect. "Are you going to kill me if I use my phone to find the keys?"  
  
"No, I'm just going to thank you for the warning." Reid closed his eyes and sank back down into the nightmare he hadn't quite managed to chase away. It came on in flickers, now, vicious half-accusations from a face that somehow remained beautiful, even as it wasted away. And he realised that was Chaz's perception, right before he realised that everything had tilted sideways. Lying on the floor. They were lying on the floor, and he could feel the linoleum against his cheek, and he knew where that would go -- this would become something he'd seen before, if he couldn't stop it.  
  
"Got 'em." The sound of Langly opening the door followed, and the light from the hall was recognisable even with closed eyes. "Just be here, when I get back. Just... be you."  
  
"Just come back in the same number of pieces you left, and you've got a deal."  
  
Half a minute after the door clicked shut, Reid sat up, checking to make sure his nose wasn't bleeding. No, that was just the dream. He crossed the narrow gap to the other bed and sat on the edge of it, eyeing the shadow where Chaz had pressed his back against the wall, one shoulder jammed down below the edge of the mattress.  
  
Closer, now, he could almost taste the fear. Or maybe that was part of the dream. He pushed back harder against it, sliding his own memories into the gaps in Chaz's, into the spaces the nightmare tried to fill. Leather, not linoleum. Waking up on the couch, the dim light filtering through the curtains, to the smell of old books and orange oil. A day in which nothing needed to be done. A small smile, a book half-read, already waiting where he'd left it on the coffee table, when he'd stopped being able to make sense of the words, the night before. They stretched and then reached for it, and Reid meant to use it as an exit -- open the book, open your eyes -- but the nightmare wasn't quite done with them. The weight across their hips didn't register until the hands landed on their shoulders, and they stared up at the face of the half-dead woman above them, the astringent smell of half-finished mead nearly overpowering as it slowly filled the room.  
  
And Reid did the only thing he could think to do. He grabbed at a memory of his own that was near enough to the shapes at hand and much more pleasant, however embarrassing it might have been at the time. The room became a hotel room; the woman became Lila. And his own embarrassment was stark enough to wake Chaz with a start.  
  
"Why're you all the way over there?"  
  
Reid took a deep breath, trying to steady his voice before he said anything. "I didn't think you'd want anyone touching you, after that. Not right away."  
  
Chaz coughed and wedged himself out from between the bed and the wall, propping himself up in the corner. "You mean you didn't want to touch me, after what you saw."  
  
"That's not what I said. I didn't know how you'd wake up. I didn't want you to think you _hadn't_ woken up." Reid paused, hands fisted in his lap to keep them from shaking. "Langly's gone out to get dinner for all of us. Do you want me to grab you something before he gets back?"  
  
"You're still not asking the obvious question."  
  
Reid looked up to where he knew Chaz's eyes were, even in the dark. "You're right. It's not my business. None of it is, unless you want it to be."  
  
"Or unless I have nightmares that you can't avoid." Chaz sighed and pulled his knees up. "Yeah, grab me a Twinkie, and I'll tell you at least some of it."  
  
"You sure you want--"  
  
"I'm sure you can find his bag faster than you can find mine, without turning on a light, mostly because even I don't remember where I put mine down, yet."  
  
"I do." Reid leaned over the edge of the bed and slid Chaz's bag out, finding what Langly assured him were regrettably awful protein bars in the exact same place they always were. He tossed two to Chaz and sat back up. "You always put it in the same place."  
  
"And my better half knows me better than I do," Chaz muttered, the crinkle of a wrapper the only sound in the room for a few long moments.  
  
"Other half, maybe. I'll still argue 'better'."  
  
"You'll stop arguing that soon." Chaz could feel the look Reid was giving him. He didn't need to see it. "I once made a mistake. I've made a lot of mistakes, but this one -- this _series_ of stupid decisions -- cost a lot of lives."  
  
"That's the job, and it never gets any easier." Reid laid down along the edge of the bed.  
  
"No. No, this was not the job. This was ... Spencer, listen to me. There are things I've never told anyone, because it's just not safe, and it's not going to help. And I'm afraid you're going to end up holding parts of them, whether I want that to happen or not, because of what Weaver did to me. I need you to take what I'm telling you at face value, for now, not because I don't think you can handle it, but because someone else's life may depend on you _not knowing_ parts of it. I'd prefer you didn't know any of it, but if someone _has to_ know..."  
  
"How sure are you that _Weaver _doesn't know?"  
  
"I'm sure that even if he did see parts of it, Weaver doesn't know enough about me to understand what any of it means. _You_ don't; why would he?" Chaz stopped talking to swallow. "And even if he said something to someone, what am I going to say about it? I'm going to say he picked up my nightmares. Because that's all those are, now. I have memories that are nothing but nightmares -- things that won't be real, because I've already seen them, and I know the mistakes that would make them happen."  
  
"She showed you the future," Reid guessed.  
  
Chaz paused for a long moment. "No, but for the moment, let's go with yes. It was something like that."  
  
"And you're afraid if anyone finds out who she is, she'll die, and it'll be your fault."  
  
"Yes." This time, there was no hesitation.  
  
"So, you're having nightmares about a future you stopped from happening, because this woman helped you avoid the mistake that started it."  
  
"Yes."  
  
Reid paused, contemplative. "Isn't that the plot of Terminator?"  
  
Despite himself, Chaz snorted in amusement, pressing his face against his knees. "Oh, shit. No. No, it's not, but... Terminator had a guy go back in time to save the mother of the resistance leader that the robots sent somebody back in time to kill. Still, the idea was that changing something in the past would change the future, so... kind of?"  
  
"Either way, are you afraid this future could still happen, or are you just having... it feels very strange to say 'flashbacks of the future'."  
  
"Both." Chaz took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "In this future, most of my team died on a single case -- a case I can say most of us actually survived, because I knew what was coming, when we got that far. And I was angry. I was so angry. Mostly at myself, but also at the system I thought had made it possible for us to be in that position. And Sol left me something he'd been writing, and as far as I could tell, it was true. I'd been there for parts of it, but there were parts that had taken place before I was even born, and I knew they were real. I'd hadn't seen them, but I'd seen the aftermath. And I took it and went public with it. Very public. And hundreds, thousands of people died, were _killed_, because I made a choice that was based more in grief than the fact that I have an actual degree in knowing what people are like and how they'll respond to shit like that. And I know I'd do just that. That's ... I know me that well. That would not have been the first time I let grief blind me and someone else paid for it. And _that's_ what I have nightmares about."  
  
Reid reached out and wrapped a hand around Chaz's foot. "You are not a monster. I can hear that in your head, and it's not true. A monster would've done it _anyway_, even knowing the cost. A monster would have done it _intentionally_."  
  
"I was still too late to save everyone. I was too far up my own ass, for too long, and I didn't even see what we were dealing with until it was too late," Chaz argued, crumpling the wrappers in his fist in irritation.  
  
"I know that you'll never forgive yourself, because I won't forgive myself, either. But, we both know there's only so much the human mind can handle, at once, and as good as we are, even we have limits." Reid sat back up, pulling himself up to the head of the bed, and offered an arm to Chaz. He'd waited until there would be no questions about how sure he was, about whether he knew what he was doing. "But, we're not alone, any more. If nothing else, there's two of us, and we seem to be making that work. I feel like my eyeballs have gone through a juicer, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for not letting me try to push this case forward in that condition."  
  
"You wanted me to sleep," Chaz reminded him, curling up against Reid's side and pulling him as close as they could be without physically being the same person, with no mind to how the elbows and hips would fit into that. And then the tension tremble started in the back of his neck and crept down his spine until his whole body vibrated. "You weren't going out there without me -- it wouldn't look right. So, if I had to sleep, you had to do something about the headache I gave you."  
  
"I don't think you gave it to me. I think you just made it worse." Reid huffed and draped his other arm across Chaz's midsection. "That sounds bad, but I just mean it was a migraine, and exposure to _anything _was going to make it worse. The sun, noise from the car, your waking nightmare in the seat next to me, Langly touching me to help me out of the car... none of these things made it _better_. It probably would've come on more slowly if I'd been indoors and not trying to listen to the interviews and their accompanying background information, but obviously we were already on the road, so that wasn't going to happen."  
  
"Was that an 'it's not you; it's me'?" Chaz teased, breath coming in short pants as he spoke. It was harder to focus on long breaths while talking.  
  
"You're an ass, but still not a monster. And I happen to enjoy touching you." Reid ran his fingers through Chaz's hair. "And if you're going to cry, you might want to do that now, because Langly's going to be back soon, and I don't think you want to explain it to him."  
  
"Nightmares." Chaz buried his face against Reid's chest. "I know he understands nightmares."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lost? **[Rocks Fall; Nobody Dies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147025)** might not actually help with that.


	16. Chapter 16

When Mary met them all at the hotel, the next morning, the feds didn't look like feds, and Langly looked like a literature professor. Actually, all of them together looked like refugees from a European literature conference. And at a second glance, Chaz looked... healthier, somehow, like maybe he'd gained a little weight, and the circles under his eyes weren't as dark. Mary wondered if he'd caught something and swelled up a bit, but he wasn't coughing or sniffing, so maybe not. Probably just a trick of the light.  
  
"Are we really doing this?" she looked across all three of them. "Looking like this?"  
  
"You get to sit behind Spencer," was Chaz's only response as he pulled the keys out of his pocket and headed for the parking lot.  
  
"He's in a mood," Mary hissed to Langly, as they followed.  
  
Langly shrugged, like this was perfectly normal. "Bad case. He's having nightmares again. So, maybe do not bend, spindle, or mutilate the fibbie, today."  
  
"_Bend, spindle, or mutilate?_" Mary looked confused, possibly even concerned.  
  
"It's a postal metaphor." Langly clapped her on the shoulder and didn't quite turn far enough to look at her. "You looked like you were thinking about sorting his package."  
  
Mary looked at Reid in disbelief and gestured at her cousin with both hands.  
  
Reid's eyebrows raised in peak professorial seriousness. "Please do not sort my package now or at any future time. Your cousin has already managed about all the handling it can take."  
  
Langly laughed so suddenly that his attempt to get a hand over his mouth would've ended with a finger in his eye, had he not smacked it into and smudged it across his glasses, instead.  
  
Reid could feel Chaz's grudging amusement a few yards ahead, where he sat warming up the car.

* * *

"You're not Jehovah's Witnesses are you? Mormons, maybe?" The old woman at the door squinted at them, disgustedly, a lit cigarette hanging from her fingers.  
  
"No, ma'am. FBI." Reid held his badge close to the storm door, waiting until he could be sure she'd at least stopped squinting at it, if not that she'd managed to read it. "Agents Reid and Villette."  
  
Chaz nodded and held up his badge. "If you're Annabel Lakeland we're here to ask you about someone you might have known a long time ago. A doctor who used to practise here in Lincoln."  
  
"Yeah, that's me. I'm Annie. A doctor, huh? And it's the FBI asking?" The old woman took a long drag, her eyes lingering on one and then the other of them. "What'd he do?"  
  
"Well, we're not sure he did anything, Mrs. Lakeland," Reid admitted. "But, there are certain... anomalies that have shown up later in life in the children of some of his patients, and we're just interested in finding the truth, before any wild rumours take off in the press."  
  
The old woman nodded, knowingly, and unlatched the storm door, holding it open for them. "Like that reporter, all those years ago. He never did write his story, but he came and talked to me about Dr Granger. That's who you mean, isn't it?"  
  
"It is." Reid hesitated at the door. "Do you mind if we bring our consultants in? Their understanding of science and medicine is better than ours."  
  
Chaz nodded. "We catch bad guys. They sometimes figure out which guys and how bad."  
  
Mrs Lakeland made a low rumbling sound as she waved them in, impatiently. "I'm going to need to put on another pot of coffee."  
  
Mary made it past the woman without so much as an eyebrow raise, but her eyes widened as Langly passed her.  
  
"You look just like my boy. What's your name, son?"  
  
"Frank Arroway, FBI technical consultant. Don't look at me; I'm from Kansas." Langly pointed at Mary. "She's from here. That's Dr Mary Langly, the, ah--"  
  
"Consulting pathologist," Mary finished, studying the pictures hanging along the hall that stretched back toward the kitchen. "She's right. You really _do _look like this guy."  
  
"I look like a lot of people." Langly side-eyed Mary as he edged past her to the kitchen, positioning himself defensively between the two feds.  
  
"You must," Mrs Lakeland said, turning to take a closer look at Mary. "The two of you look very similar, too! Are you related?"  
  
"Yeah," Mary said.  
  
"No," Langly said.  
  
And then they stared at each other, each expecting the other to give.  
  
"Well, sort of," Langly conceded. "If you take the long way around."  
  
"But, back to the reason we're here," Reid cut in, trying to redirect the conversation and well aware it had hit exactly why they were there, but much too soon, "Dr Langly has some questions about Dr Granger's work with your family, and a few questions about your son -- Jack, right?"  
  
Mrs Lakeland nodded as she took a seat at the kitchen table and waved to the half pot of coffee still sitting in the coffee maker, with a line of cups on hooks behind it. "Help yourself if you want a cup. I'm not sure what I can tell you. Jack Senior and I couldn't have any kids, so we went to that clinic -- they had a big ad that ran for a while about how they weren't just about helping rich people, and they'd help just as much if you were poor, and I remember that. We weren't poor by any means, but going to a doctor for some fancy science to have a baby didn't sound like the kind of thing we could afford. But, I saw that in the paper, and I showed it to Jack Senior, and we just went down there to see. And in the year, I had Jack Junior. Just a regular boy. Nothing... what'd you call it? Anomalous about him."  
  
"Well, it might not have been something you'd have noticed right away." Mary pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat, turning on the tablet she'd borrowed from Langly and opening her initial sheet of questions. "We don't know of any cases where it was anything directly harmful, just some minor abnormalities that show up better when you're looking at the group, rather than just the individual. Still, Dr Granger's been dead for almost thirty years, so we're really just looking to find out the truth, so we can close this file. Nothing you tell us can hurt him, now."  
  
It wasn't, Reid thought, quite how he'd have approached the subject, but he could definitely see the benefit in assuring Mrs Lakeland she wouldn't be harming the man who'd helped her have 'a regular boy'.  
  
"Now, I'd like to start with a few questions about the procedure, itself, and if you'd feel more comfortable about it, the rest of my team can wait in another room..."

* * *

By the end of the third interview, Langly was wound tighter than a fresh bobbin and Chaz was starting to look a lot less polished.  
  
"Is your concealer rubbing off or something?" Mary asked, having an almost clear view of Chaz's face when he glanced over to say something to Reid. "You should really stop buying the cheap stuff."  
  
Reid answered her, when Chaz started to look about as thrilled with the interruption as a wet cat in a Christmas sweater. "He needs to stop for lunch. _I_ need to stop for lunch."  
  
"I don't think a steak's going to help unless you mean to put it on that black eye."  
  
"You'd be surprised," Langly told her, pitching one of those godawful protein bars over the seat, into Chaz's lap. "Not feeding us for too long is a bad idea. Like feeding a mogwai after midnight bad. We're a lot less cute when we haven't been eating."  
  
"But, he hasn't even been doing anything!" Mary shot a look at her cousin without turning her head. "Okay, you? I know you've probably been doing some kind of network fuckery. I know you. You probably went through every electronic device in every house we were in, and maybe the neighbours', because you're just like that. And you don't look good, but you don't look _that bad_."  
  
"Frank can turn it off," Reid said, quietly. "Chaz can't."  
  
It wasn't the whole truth but Chaz had made it clear several times how little of the truth he meant to tell Mary, if he could help it. Not now. Not while there was a chance she could make his mistakes for him. And more than that, not while there was a chance she could connect the dots and figure out that he could have been in her head. So, unwilling to reveal how Chaz had actually spent the duration of those interviews, Reid stuck with the obvious answer -- that Chaz's beta abilities never turned off and neither did the connection between the two of them.  
  
"Well, that sounds like bad design."  
  
Chaz's knuckles turned white against the steering wheel. "Can we not critique the Anomaly's planning skills until after I've had an actual meal?"  
  
Langly ignored the tension in the car, his eyes focused on something only he could see. "Make a left at the next light, two blocks down, then right into the first parking lot. It's the nearest restaurant, so I hope you're all good with barbecue."

* * *

After half a basket of breadsticks and an enormous glass of sweet tea, Chaz started to look a little better -- still less than entirely thrilled with the world, but better. He looked around the table and debated whether to save the shop talk for after they'd finished eating, or even until the actual food hit the table, but it looked like it was going to be a while, and he wasn't sure he really wanted to hang around too long after they didn't leave any leftovers. People tended to be surprised, and surprise made them remember you. The last thing _Langly _needed was to be remembered.  
  
"So, what do we know? Middle-class families with at least one parent from a farm family -- and we knew that was likely -- and all three say their kids aren't weird."  
  
Langly interrupted, pointing across the table with a breadstick. "Reid, does your mother think you're weird?"  
  
"I've never asked." Reid shrugged and looked back at Chaz, hoping to get off the subject of his mother.  
  
Langly tried again. "Nice deflection, but not an answer. You'd know."  
  
"No, she doesn't. She thinks I'm perfectly normal and everybody else is weird." Reid turned his gaze to Langly. "My mother has also been a resident in a long-term psychiatric care facility since I was working on my doctorate, so I don't think she's the example you want here."  
  
Mary stared, and Reid realised she hadn't known. Of course she hadn't known. He hadn't actually meant to share that with her, but Langly had _visited _his mother and Chaz... he'd long since taken for granted that Chaz knew, and he'd forgotten that Mary had no reason to know.  
  
Langly leaned into Mary's line of sight. "Yeah, hi, my boyfriend's a nutterbar from a long line of nutterbars. Are you really surprised? He's dating me."  
  
Chaz cleared his throat. "Back to the point at hand, Langly's right. There's not a lot of cases where parents will suggest that something might be ... not quite right about their children, unless it's unavoidably obvious. But, we've got two out of three children with 'big appetites'. All of them were smart kids. All three are nearsighted. And the way their parents looked at the two of you, even before you told them..."  
  
"Johnstone knew as soon as he saw us," Mary said, spearing a pickle with her fork and shaking it at Chaz, as she looked for the next part of that thought. "You could see his face change, when he saw the two of us, right after you asked if he remembered Dr Granger. He was just waiting for us to admit it."  
  
"Johnstone probably suspected something for a long time. Both he and his wife are dark-haired and brown eyed," Reid pointed out.  
  
"Lakeland, at least, was blond. At some point." Mary took a bite of the pickle and kept gesturing with it. "Lakeland kind of bothers me. Something's off, there."  
  
"It's the Valium," Chaz said, quietly.  
  
"The... what now? How do you--?"  
  
"Because I found her prescription?" Langly rolled his eyes and kicked Chaz under the table. "She's been on it forever. You want to know why she thinks Jack Junior's normal? That's a great reason."  
  
"Everything she told us was true, to the best of her knowledge," Chaz offered. "I can tell you that, for sure. I'm not sure she has the motivation left to lie." He eyed Mary. "And _that _is what I was doing. I can tell if people are lying. It's pretty useful in this line of work, but it's not the kind of thing you want to actively engage in for six straight hours."  
  
It was like the truth. It was a close neighbour to the truth. And fundamentally, it wasn't _untrue_.  
  
"Okay, so what's your take on Davis?" Mary asked, eyes more cautious, now.  
  
"Madeline Davis was full of shit," Langly announced, flicking his tablet into the middle of the table.  
  
Chaz nodded his agreement. "Any further from civilisation, and Mike would've turned out like you. I get the sense that would've been an improvement, no matter what she says."  
  
"The sealed juvie record agrees with you." Langly gestured to the tablet. "Still, the guy's not _stupid_. Some of those are definitely things I could've been arrested for. I'm just a little better at not getting _caught_."  
  
Reid groaned. "Can you no--"  
  
"Statute of limitations ran out at _least _fifteen years ago, if not sooner. That's assuming the potato cannon did felony property damage, and you already know about that." Langly pulled down the corner of his eye at Reid. "Dan Davis wants to believe his kid's a clone. Means it's not his fault."  
  
"And Madeline has absolutely blamed him for the problems Mike had." Chaz pulled the tablet closer and flipped through the open document with one finger. "What stands out to me, here, isn't the number of times the guy got into trouble for blowing up his inventions or putting things through windows. What stands out is the number of times he got picked up for shoplifting _food_. And if you look at the dates, it stops as soon as he's not living at home. I'd be willing to venture that Mike Davis has at least one entirely inexplicable talent, and he's _always _had it."  
  
"Leda Johnstone is the most likely to be an alpha." Reid started moving things as he saw the waiter approaching with an overloaded tray. "Which may mean the success rate, if the anomalous elements are intentional, is gender-linked. Still, it's a little early to venture that. I want to meet them all, before we try to put Granger's intended results together."  
  
"It may be gender linked even if the anomalous elements, as you put it, are unintentional. Not a lot of people are born that way, and _survive_, which means we're looking at a very fortunate handful of people, if they were. And Johnstone may not be ... unaffected. She may just not have shown any signs until later in life." Chaz shoved the tablet back across the table to Langly, and the waiter filled the space with a plate of ribs obviously intended to feed at least two people. "We have signposts, but we still don't have certainties."


	17. Chapter 17

Two more interviews, and Chaz just looked _bad_. Actually, Reid reflected, he looked about like he had that morning, before he'd ducked downstairs to raid the breakfast buffet. It was still bad, it just wasn't _worse_. And not for the first time, he thought Chaz really did need a vacation that didn't involve slipping and falling into a case. But, as far as he could tell, that was a problem for both of them, and they were in the same place, at the same time, so it was almost inevitable.  
  
"Do you want to sit this one out?" he asked Chaz, as they pulled up at the last house for the day. "It's probably going to be more of the same."  
  
Chaz shook his head and straightened his hair, in the mirror. "I think I saw a pair of sunglasses in the glove box. Pass me those?"  
  
"Now you look like you're trying to hide a black eye," Langly said, from behind him. "You're a fed. You're supposed to look a little dangerous."  
  
"Yeah, _dangerous_." Mary rolled her eyes. "Not like you haven't slept in a week."  
  
Chaz stuck a hand over his shoulder. "Gimmie."  
  
Langly put a bottle of orange juice in his hand and then a protein bar, when he reached back again.  
  
"Ten minutes," Chaz said with his mouth full. "Ten minutes, and I'll be all right."  
  
"Look, it's none of my god damn business, and I know it, but you're not doing so good, today, and it's a hell of a lot more than just lie detecting." Langly leaned between the seats, wedging Mary into the corner. "I've seen you do shit this doesn't even touch and walk away from it not even breathing hard. Something's fucking wrong, Villette."  
  
"I know that." Chaz deposited the wrapper and the empty bottle in the trash bag Reid held out to him and then put back on the floor. "I'm on _medical leave_, remember? You saw me the night I came into town. I should probably still be in bed, but I don't like being in bed, because there's nothing quite as boring as staring at the walls because you can't go back to sleep. But, I'm supposed to be doing things like resting, healing, getting ready to pass another psych eval before I'm allowed back in the field, after that."  
  
"Technically probably not the kind of doctor you'd prefer, if you got shot or something, but I am a medical doctor, and I'm sitting right here," Mary reminded them all, feeling like a bit of a shit about ribbing Chaz so hard, all day. "If you want me to take a look at you and see what I can do to help..."  
  
"Thank you, but you _are _the wrong kind of doctor. I have a specialist, back in Virginia for ... things like this." Chaz rested his head on the steering wheel, willing himself to digest food faster, so he could put his face back on and get out of the car. "Not every gamma has talents as innocuous as your cousin's. And I stopped this guy, but I did it by getting in his way, and he did some solid damage, going down. But, I'm very good at what I do, and I'm not going to sit back and twiddle my thumbs while the rest of you step in front of fifty-something years of _probably actually my job_."  
  
Langly couldn't help himself. "Villette? I can safely say that while this has been going on for at least fifty years, it's only been your job for what, twelve of them? It's been mine for thirty, and I missed the whole fucking thing."  
  
"And he's still the oldest possible clone we've found, so I mean, Patient Zero missed the bus." Mary squeezed her foot up and shoved Langly's knees out of her way. "Had to be all three of us to even figure out it was happening."  
  
"Duke knew something," Chaz muttered. "Hand me another orange juice?"  
  
"That might be me," Reid admitted, holding out his hand. He passed the first bottle to Chaz and opened the second for himself.  
  
Langly finally leaned back, and Mary shoved him back onto his side of the back seat, as he kept talking. "Duke knew something, but he couldn't figure out what he was seeing. There was no rational explanation for it, at the time, and by the time he brought it to Reyes, who, let me remind you, saw it way before you did, everybody involved was dead, and the kids mostly weren't in jail or starring in carnival freakshows."  
  
"_You _could've." Mary poked Langly in the ribs.  
  
"Only 'cause you weren't born yet," he retorted.  
  
"The first one of you to call me 'mom' is walking back to the hotel," Chaz announced, raising his voice just enough to be sure he'd be heard in the back seat.  
  
"You almost alive, up there? 'Cause I think the neighbours are going to start talking if we don't get moving, soon," Langly noted, peering out the window at the houses across the street.  
  
"He's right. We're four adults in a large vehicle, with_out_ a government plate, and this is a residential neighbourhood. If we belonged here, we'd have gotten out of the car and gone up to a house." Reid looked out his own window, studying the house they meant to approach. "If you're not up to this, trade seats with me, and I'll get us back to the hotel. No, I don't drive as well as you do, but I can drive in the snow, and you know it."  
  
"Almost. I'll be fine before we get the cops called on us, but someone else is driving us back to the hotel after this, because I'm taking a nap in the back seat." When Chaz raised his head, he once again looked like a version of himself from an alternate universe -- clear-eyed and a lot less hollow-cheeked. "Let's do this before I can't stand up. If anyone asks, I'm telling them I got shot on my last case."  
  
"Works for me." Langly was the first out of the car, and he lingered a bit after he closed the door, in case Chaz needed something to hold on to as he got out.  
  
Somehow, they made their way up the snowy walk without falling, and Reid knocked on the door, which was answered by a woman who looked like Mary, but fifteen pounds lighter and with different glasses. She stood almost as tall as Reid, whom she looked right in the eye, expectantly.  
  
He kept the surprise off his face, but barely, as he took out his badge. "Agents Reid and Villette, FBI. We're here to speak with Mimi Novak."  
  
"You think you can just show up in the middle of the day and scare the hell out of an old woman?" The young woman's shoulders squared and the illusion of health slid off Chaz's face as he took a step back to avoid falling. "She doesn't know anything. She didn't see anything."  
  
Chaz raised a hand to his nose, checking for blood. He felt like he'd been punched right between the eyes, but Reid seemed entirely unaffected. "How long have you been able to do that?"  
  
"Do what?" The woman glared at him. "I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
Reid took advantage of her shift in focus to wave the Langlys forward.  
  
"Oh, you do. I know you do." Chaz raised his eyes to hers, and she looked away suddenly, catching a glimpse of Mary over Reid's shoulder.  
  
"Oh, what the fuck?"  
  
"Took the words right out of my mouth," Mary drawled, cocking a thumb at Langly. "It was bad enough when there were only two of us."  
  
Langly leaned around Reid, knocking the snow off the porch railing. "Yeah, hi, we're here to talk to your mom about your birth, because we think something fucked up happened and _we'd know_."  
  
"Frank!" Reid hissed.  
  
"He's not wrong," Chaz admitted. "But, we have more questions about the doctor she was seeing around that time, because we suspect... well..." He gestured at the Langlys. "Something's not right, and it went on for about twenty years, if we're not mistaken, because they're almost on both ends of that."  
  
The woman stared at them for another moment, and Langly stomped his feet against the cold, trying to shake the snow off.  
  
"You'd better come in." The woman opened the storm door, clipping Langly across the forehead with it. "I'm Delia Novak. Why don't you..." She looked around, frustrated. "Door on your right. Sit at the table. I'll go get mom. She's just watching television with her headphones on."  
  
They stepped into what had, at one point, been a dining room, the back open to the kitchen and a breakfront along one wall, but now half the table was piled with papers and boxes in what looked like an accumulation of several months of mail. One chair held a large, brown cat that looked up at Chaz, sneezed, and went back to sleep.  
  
"Move out of the way of the door," Chaz said, quietly, stepping back to lean against the wall next to it. "Just in case, let's not be stupid. She's absolutely a gamma, and if anything happens, Spencer gets to deal with that, because I don't think I _can_."  
  
"What'd she--" Langly started, only to stop talking as a woman who looked a little older than Susanne stepped into the room, and if that didn't put things into a certain horrible perspective, he wasn't sure what would.  
  
"Well, hello!" The older woman smiled at them. "I'm sorry, there really aren't enough chairs. I don't get many visitors." She looked up at Chaz. "Oh, my. Look at you, all the way up there. You don't look well, young man. Sit, before you fall down."  
  
"Er, thank you." Chaz scooped up the cat and inserted himself between it and the seat. "Agent Chaz Villette, FBI."  
  
"Pudding, don't bother The Man," the woman huffed at the cat, who seemed unimpressed, and Langly could hear the capital letters.  
  
"Ma'am, are you a fan of Solomon Todd's work?" Langly asked, leaning his hip against the edge of the table. "You sound like you've got good taste."  
  
"A good man with a strong voice, always ready to use it when things weren't as they should be. It's such a shame he disappeared, like that." The woman shook her head. "Oh, where are my manners." She held out her hand to Langly. "Mimi Novak. My daughter says you want to speak to me about one of the doctors I saw while I was pregnant with her? ... Looking at the two of you, I can guess what you're thinking, but Dr Granger wasn't blond."  
  
"Oh my god." Mary's eyes crossed, and she started pacing where the wood of the dining room gave way to the linoleum of the kitchen. "Okay, that was... not on my list of things to consider, but thanks for that."  
  
"Frank Arroway, technical consultant," Langly introduced himself as he shook Mimi's hand. "And making herself crazy in the corner is our consulting pathologist, Dr Mary Langly. The quiet nerd next to Villette is the other badge, Agent Spencer Reid. Villette's the lead on this one, but thank you for making him sit down, because he needs it, yes, you, Villette, don't give me that look."  
  
When Langly stopped to breathe, Mimi chuckled and pulled over a chair for herself. "Now, you mentioned Solomon Todd, so I'm assuming you've seen his notes, from when he wanted to write about The Family Way. The last I heard, he hadn't found anything that would let him publish what he thought about that clinic without a libel charge. Mind you, whatever _he _thought, I was just happy with Delia, even if she didn't look a thing like me. The doctor warned us about that, you know. He said there was something in the method that sometimes damaged some non-essential parts of the egg, and not to worry if she looked different than we did, but to let him know if there seemed to be anything wrong with her. I guess in a few early cases, there was some more ... important damage."  
  
"How long has she been eating enough for two people?" Chaz asked, not even trying to disguise that he knew something was wrong.  
  
Mimi gave him a long, slow look. "Now, I'd ask you how you know that, but you look like you're sick with it, too. You're all skin and bone."  
  
"Bingo," Langly chimed in, from the other end of the table. "And I'm number three."  
  
"But, you don't look anything like _them_." Mimi was still studying Chaz. "So, whatever _this _is, it's got nothing to do with _that_."  
  
"I have a number for a doctor in Virginia that she can call. It's not a widely-known condition, and it doesn't really have a name, yet, but there are people studying it, and they can probably help a lot more than anyone she's seen." Chaz twisted around to pull out his wallet and left a card on a clear spot of the table. "I know I don't look like a promising future, but I'm a lousy patient and something of a clinical study in what happens if you completely ignore most of the rules. The short answer is 'don't be me; be him'." He pointed at Langly. "And yes, this condition appears in people from all across the ethnic and economic spectrum, but there's evidence it may appear more often in the children of Dr Granger's patients. A _great deal_ more often."  
  
Mimi nodded solemnly and then smiled, patting Chaz on the knee. "Well, I'm glad someone knows what the hell it is! She was always a thin girl, just sticks and bones, but somewhere in high school, she started eating more. And we were sure something was wrong, so we took her to the doctor, and they ran all kinds of tests, and... nothing! She was fine! She just needed to eat more food. So, we made sure there was enough that she'd never be hungry, and I tell you, she never gained an ounce. But, now... she won't tell me, but I think it got worse, recently. She lives on her own, of course, but she comes here to help me out, sometimes. I can't be salting the walk, at my age. I'll slip and fall. But, I used to send her home with leftovers, and the last few months, there aren't any. I'm going to have to learn to cook more, again."  
  
"She'll probably be okay, Mrs Novak. She came to it later, like Frank did, and that always helps. But, you need to know it might start to affect her behaviour. At certain stages, this condition can affect the brain, but it's _treatable_. If she starts acting ... out of character, give that number on the card a call and let the doctor know. I'll call, tonight, and tell them to expect to hear from one or both of you." Chaz managed a weak smile and a projection of confidence and honesty. Still, Mimi seemed equal parts concerned and relieved by his words. "But, we do still need to ask you about Dr Granger and his clinic, so I'm going to shut up and let Dr Langly get to her questions."


	18. Chapter 18

With Mary and Mimi deep in conversation, Chaz had eased himself out of the room.   
  
"Just need a little fresh air," he said, heading for the front door, surprised that no one tried to stop him -- he felt about as good as he looked -- but not at all surprised at Reid's wordless inquiry taking shape in the back of his head. He opened that door a little wider, as he went out to where Delia was salting the porch and the walk.  
  
"You want a hand with that?"  
  
Delia didn't even look up, sprinkling another handful of salt over the footprints in the snow. "If I did, I'd have asked the woman with you. She looks like she's not going to blow over in a stiff breeze."  
  
"Because you're one to talk." Chaz braced himself, expecting her to swat at him again, but she studied him like a cat watches a wounded bird.  
  
"What is it you think you know?" she asked, and Chaz could tell the wrong answer was going to put him on his ass.  
  
"I know that fairly recently, you lost control of your metabolism, for the _second _time. I know that around the same time, you started having much better luck getting people to not just leave you alone, but physically leave. I know that before that, you probably had some unusual, but generally explicable talent, like being absurdly good at math or maybe having a fantastic memory for faces. I know that each time your metabolism shifted, something happened almost immediately beforehand -- something you were probably afraid of for a very good reason." Chaz was extremely pleased to still be standing, so far, given that the look on Delia's face had gone from condescending curiosity to wariness. And if he wasn't careful, she _would _bite. "I know this because I know other people who went through it. The inexplicable metabolic malfunction, the weird talents you didn't have yesterday, but probably wouldn't have gotten out of that situation without." He took a breath and pushed his hair back, tucking it behind his ear, his sleeve sliding up to bare his wrist. "I know this because I _am _other people who went through it. Look at me. It's pretty obvious."  
  
"Yeah, great, god made two of us. God also apparently made three of me. So what?" Delia went back to scattering salt.  
  
"There are a lot more than two of us, and we're pretty sure there are a lot more than three of you. We've identified fifteen candidates currently living in the state of Nebraska, including you, but not counting my teammates. And the question is how many of you are like us, because right now that number is already a lot higher than it is in the general population." Chaz put his hands back in his pockets, intensely aware of the cold. "And that's the bad news."  
  
"_Fifteen _of us? Fifteen people who look like some kind of fucked up identical twins?" Delia stopped and squinted into the snow. "And you said twenty years. And mom said she was lucky, that not all the babies actually survived, and the doctor warned her about that. Fifteen successes in twenty years, and we _all look alike_?"  
  
"Fifteen still living now and still living in Nebraska. Which means the number is probably larger, but outside the state, we're less likely to find them, even with facial recognition, because even here we had to filter out people who actually looked like their parents. Which means we may have missed someone, but the margin of error's going to be smaller than if we didn't filter. This also doesn't count anyone who may have died between nineteen sixty-four and now, whether as a child or an adult, and as you're probably noticing, if there are more of you like _us_, dying is a lot easier." Chaz shrugged. "And we don't know how many 'successes' in terms of live births without eventually-fatal defects _don't_ look like you. The clinic had other doctors, and we don't know that all of Dr Granger's patients were part of whatever project produced the three -- possibly fifteen -- of you. _That's_ what we're here to find out."  
  
"This is some fucked up sci-fi shit," Delia insisted, jabbing a finger at Chaz. "And if I didn't see that woman, myself, I wouldn't believe a word of it."  
  
"Dr Langly." Chaz nodded. "And speaking of Dr Langly, if you don't mind, we'd like to get a DNA sample from you. Just a cheek swab. We'll share the results with you, but we want to see if you match up the same way they do. You're... I'm guessing here. Probably around my age. Thirty-five to forty?"  
  
"Forty-two."  
  
"So's my sister." Chaz nodded, again, eyes closed as he split his attention between the conversation, Delia's power, and Reid's concerns. "That puts you between Frank and Mary, but a little closer to Mary. We're trying to figure out what changed, over time, in the method."  
  
"So, we're... what, _are _we twins? Or... whatever you call twins when there's fifteen of them..." Delia pushed her glasses up with her wrist, in almost the same way Mary did.  
  
"Here's what we're sure of, and it's not much. We know that some amount of genetic tinkering was done, but we're relatively certain that none of the material that went into you and the others actually came from any of the parents we've interviewed, so far, because neither of the samples we have matches their parents or each others' parents, but they do match _each other_. So, first of all, we know Dr Granger was lying about using the parents' cells. We think the extra tinkering is why not all of the embryos were viable, and in a somewhat more dramatic way than you'd usually see." Chaz opened his eyes and promptly decided the snow was much too reflective. "You're _most likely _twins, or whatever one calls it when there are fifteen of them. Obviously, you're not identical, because Frank, but I'd be interested to see if you're identical to _Mary _\-- Dr Langly, that is."  
  
"And I'm almost afraid to ask, but... what would we be if we're not twins?"  
  
"Clones."  
  
Delia studied him, to see if he was joking, but found nothing. "The sheep was later."  
  
"The sheep was someone else's project. Still, that is a good part of why we think you're just slightly-tweaked twins, rather than anything else." Chaz chose his next words carefully, bracing himself in case she lashed out again. "We suspect Dr Granger may have been a eugenicist -- that he offered his services so freely to more widely spread his preferred version of mankind. It's the best thought we have on why you'd all be so similar."  
  
Delia pulled her glasses off and set down the bag of rock salt to point at them. "Well, his preferred version of mankind sucked."  
  
"We're afraid his preferred version of mankind wasn't so much you as _us_."  
  
"He's fucking nuts." Delia put her glasses back on and looked at Chaz like he'd lost his mind. "How do you prefer a version that's probably going to starve to death?"  
  
"It's less that and more the superpowers."  
  
"Scaring the shit out of people isn't a superpower," Delia scoffed, going back to salting the walk. "Try again."  
  
"No, but I'm pretty sure you could make someone's nose bleed by yelling at them. You almost got me, earlier, but I'm not at my best." He looked at her, suddenly. "And you know I'm right, because you've done it before. Not intentionally, which makes that very dangerous, but you have. And that's not the only thing you did to him, but he had it coming, and I'm not going to say a word about it if you don't. That's when it started, isn't it?"  
  
Delia stepped back, a handful of salt clutched in her fist like she was trying to decide whether to fling it in his face. "I don't know how you found out about that. Did he file a police report? Did he really say that on paper? And they didn't just pat him on the head and show him the door?"  
  
"I know because..." Chaz rubbed his face and sighed, the pressure of her insistent suspicion like getting repeatedly batted in the eye by a cat that wants attention. "Look, I said superpowers, didn't I? Sometimes I know things that I shouldn't. I can also tell when people are lying."  
  
"And you can change your face. I wasn't sure, but you don't look like you did when I answered the door, do you?"  
  
"You did try to give me a black eye in the first five seconds." Chaz pointed to his eye and the dark circle under it, not mentioning that he'd looked like shit long before he got there. "I'm pretty sure that has something to do with it."  
  
"My mom's not big on government interference in our personal lives. FBI shows up at the door. What am I supposed to think?"  
  
"I don't know, that one of her neighbours robbed a bank?" Chaz couldn't quite suppress the way his lips quirked, half amusement, half exasperation. "You know, I'm pretty sure that was a first. I've had a gun drawn on me when I introduced myself, but I think that's the first time someone's ever punched me in the face with their brain during the first five seconds after hello."  
  
The salt shifted audibly in Delia's hand. "You don't seem at all freaked out by this. _I'm_ pretty freaked out by this, but you..."  
  
"I've had a lot of years to get used to it, and I've seen people do much worse things for much worse reasons. You seem like a decent person -- I can say that because you haven't kicked the crap out of me with your brain and you haven't thrown that salt in my face. You're thinking it -- anyone looking at you can see that you're thinking it -- but you're not doing it, and I appreciate that." Chaz paused, debating whether to finish that thought. Finally, he did. "And that's _unusual_."  
  
"What're you not the appreciative sort?" Delia sounded so much like Mary that Chaz had to remind himself again that she was a different person, despite the similarities.  
  
"Not me, _you_. A lot of us are a little more... supervillain than anything. People get weird powers and they get a little crazy with them, start taking revenge on everyone who ever wronged them, shit like that." Chaz raised his eyebrows and tipped his head, almost apologetically. "That's my job, actually. Dealing with people like us who go a step too far. Sometimes several steps... a whole flight of steps, maybe a marathon. Among any population, a certain percentage of people will be killers, but with us the percentage is a _lot _higher."  
  
"You say this like there's a lot of people, for lack of a better word, 'like us'. I can't find a single god damn doctor who can even refer me to someone who knows what's going on. Nobody else has ever even guessed there was something more than a metabolic malfunction. Where the hell--"  
  
"In Virginia." Chaz ducked his head. "I can give you a number to call -- actually, I left a card with your mother -- for a private research facility doing work on our condition. It's ... Because of what we are, we're discouraged from talking about it with other people, with people who don't have it. A large number of us are dangerous, including you and me. And that's what people are going to see, first. That's what people usually see when they're confronted with something they don't understand and have to decide how to relate to it, and that's dangerous not just for us but for people suspected of being like us. So, we're still in the early stages of figuring out how to reach out without putting ourselves and others in more danger than we're already in."  
  
Delia rolled her eyes, just like the Langlys. "People are shits, but there's no way they're _that _bad."  
  
Chaz tried very hard not to remember exactly how bad they really were. "Okay, thought experiment. Let's say you told your co-workers you could punch somebody in the face with your brain. How are they going to take that? And they _know you_."  
  
"They'd think I was nuts," Delia conceded. "Maybe they'd avoid me, but--"  
  
"First, imagine that reaction on a systemic level. Then imagine you showed them you were serious. Now how do they look at you?"  
  
"Shit." Delia sighed and went back to scattering salt. "That's why I hadn't told anyone. Who would believe me? And if they did... I mean, now, people just think I'm really good at getting scammers to stop calling. I joke that I made a deal with the devil over Halloween and I'm secretly sending them all to hell, but nobody takes it seriously. They just transfer people to me when they don't want them to call back." She paused. "I'm pretty sure I haven't really hurt anyone. Not seriously. I think I just made them afraid that I could, which is a neat trick with scammers and telemarketers."  
  
"It's not as strong when you're doing it on purpose, right? In time, it will be, if you can get control of it. And if you can't, well... one day you'll lose your shit, and we'll meet again, under even less pleasant circumstances." The last wasn't true, Chaz hoped. He'd do his damnedest to excuse himself, if it came down to that. But, he knew no amount of arguing would get him out of it, unless Reid came out in his place, and that wasn't going to happen, because he wouldn't let that happen.  
  
"Like my funeral." Delia gave him a pointed look.  
  
"Like your funeral," Chaz agreed, though he thought he might try to ditch that, too. She really did look just a little too much like Mary.


	19. Chapter 19

As promised, Chaz slept all the way back to the hotel, though Mary insisted on driving, if only because she'd driven in Lincoln in the snow more recently than any of them. Reid sat in the back, with Chaz's head in his lap, batting away the nightmares before they could settle in. When they stopped to pick up dinner, Chaz made an inquisitive sound and fell right back asleep, but Langly knew him well enough to guess what he'd want.  
  
By the time they got back to the hotel, Reid had to offer his own consciousness to even get Chaz vertical, and he and Langly had to prop him up like a stumbling drunk all the way back through the lobby to their room. Mary carried the three bags of dinner, and followed.  
  
"Jet lag finally caught up," Mary said to a couple in the elevator who politely didn't ask, but impolitely stared.  
  
Once they'd poured Chaz into bed, Langly unpacked dinner across a table obviously intended for business breakfast meetings, on the other side of an opened folding divider from the sleeping half of the room, and Reid peeled Chaz out of his jacket and shoes, putting both where he knew Chaz would expect them. He accepted the sandwich Langly handed him, setting half of it on the nightstand and taking a bite of the other half, his own experience of food serving as a reminder to Chaz that it did exist, and all he had to do was wake up. Assuming he managed to distinguish between himself and Reid, which... Reid wasn't sure he could do, just then.  
  
"I'm going to eat this, and then I'll join the two of you, over there," Reid said, covering his full mouth with his free hand. "I'm hoping he'll wake up a bit when I _stop _eating."  
  
"I'm sorry, you _what_?" Mary stared at Reid in confusion.  
  
"One and a half of us, not two," Reid reminded her. "He's tired and he needs to eat, but he's tired enough that he thinks he _is _eating, because I am. When I stop, he should be aware enough of his own hunger for it to wake him up."  
  
"Okay, have the two of you always been like this? Like... is this a life-long thing? I thought you'd only known each other a few months."  
  
Reid nodded and held up a finger as he chewed. "We have. It's... not an experience either of us has had before, but once it started, it developed rapidly, at least to some extent because we were curious."  
  
"He means when they couldn't figure out how they'd made a hole between their brains, they gave up and decided to make it bigger." Langly shrugged. "I mean, I _get it_, but that's the kind of thing that usually nets me a potato cannon with a laser sight, not a telepathic twin."  
  
Mary blinked and tipped her head contemplatively. "Yeah, when you put it like that... I can see the line between point A and point B, but 'telepathic twin' is still fucked up."  
  
"Says the woman sharing a bucket of fried chicken with her clone." Langly looked entirely unimpressed.  
  
"Right now, I'm not sure any of us have room to talk," Reid remarked, quietly, finishing his half of the sandwich and glancing around for something to wipe his hands on. Langly was quick with a fistful of warm, rumpled napkins from the bottom of one of the bags, and Reid gratefully cleaned his fingers. "Either that or we're all in the ideal position to talk. I'm not sure it matters, either way, if only because I suspect it all leads to the same place."  
  
"Speaking of leading to the same place, how about coming over here and leaving sleeping beauty to his epic snooze-a-thon?" Mary grabbed another piece of chicken. "We've got things to talk about, like how we weren't supposed to run into any of the kids, today, but walked right into somebody's very angry daughter."  
  
"Somebody's very angry, very anomalous daughter." Reid let Langly help him off the bed, feeling the confusion from Chaz when there was no second half of the sandwich forthcoming. "Who took a shot at both of us, as soon as I introduced us."  
  
"At him." Mary pointed to Chaz, but Reid shook his head.  
  
"At both of us. I'm... somewhat resistant to that sort of attack, and usually, so is Chaz, but it's been a difficult couple of weeks. She wouldn't have gotten him _twice_." Reid took a seat that put his back to the wall.  
  
"How sure are you of that?" Langly asked, grabbing a piece of chicken as he passed Mary and dropping into the chair to Reid's left. "Because he looks like shit, and she almost threw him off the porch."  
  
Reid smiled and ducked his head. "No, he almost _fell _off the porch. Surprise, more than anything."  
  
"Are you sure he's okay?"  
  
"No, I'm just as sure as he is that he's _not_ okay." Reid caught Langly's eye. "But, when has that ever stopped any of us?"  
  
Langly sputtered. "I don't usually look _that bad_."  
  
"He doesn't usually look that bad, but that's still better than you looked after--" Reid swallowed, rubbing his thumb against the side of his knuckle. "When we finally got to you, I thought you were dead."  
  
Langly snorted. "Which time?"  
  
"I'm still confused." Mary held up her hand. "What the hell did he get hit in, when he got in that guy's way?"  
  
Reid tipped his head, considering a tactful answer, but Langly beat him to the response.  
  
"Directly in the brains. That's a thing with some gammas -- they can screw with your head, and that guy turned Villette's brains into tossed salad. I mean, he already barely sleeps, but now it's worse."  
  
Reid nodded. "And he's right -- there's really nothing to do that he's not already doing. Straight back into living, just a little less intense for a while. He'll be okay -- I mean, we always are. It's just going to be a bit."  
  
"A bit of a pain in the ass, for all of us, but mostly for him," Langly agreed, looking over at Chaz, who had begun to grumble in his sleep. "You do get over it, eventually. Mostly."  
  
"Mostly," Reid agreed, getting up again to find the coffee maker, and the basket of things to put in it. He pulled out all the coffee packets and walked into the bathroom with them, the sound of a drawer opening and closing preceding his reappearance. "I moved them, so he'll know where they are, but it'll take him a minute. If he can find the coffee, he can have the coffee. I just want to make sure he has to think about it."  
  
"You want to make sure he goes back to sleep." Mary eyed Reid. "And what do you do when he gets a headache?"  
  
"I make the coffee and bring it to him." Reid shrugged. "It shouldn't actually be a problem. We drink a lot less coffee than it looks like, and of the two of us, more of it goes in me."  
  
"Says the guy who had ten cups before breakfast, in the middle of the Vanity incident." Langly rolled his eyes.  
  
"The _end_ of the Vanity incident, thank you. I hadn't slept more than... two hours a night in the preceding three days? If that?" Reid huffed and slid back into his seat. "Extenuating circumstances. Besides, that was _me_. As noted, I do drink more coffee than he does."  
  
Mary and Langly both stared at him, waiting for the light to go on.  
  
"Yes, actually, I _can _go an entire day without a cup of coffee. It's not difficult until the third day, and it stops being difficult around the eighth day. And that's why I'm sure he'll be fine." Reid paused. "And no, I don't really sleep much more, either. I'm just more coherent with coffee. And less cold."  
  
Chaz made a panicked sound, but didn't open his eyes, edging back, but not rolling over. Mary looked over her shoulder, concerned.  
  
"Nightmares," Langly said, shrugging, looking over as Reid leapt up, just a little too late.  
  
A dull thud was followed by Chaz's voice from the floor on the other side of the bed. "It's not fucking funny, Brady."  
  
"Sorry, not Brady, this time." Reid knelt on the bed and leaned over the far side, offering his hand. "We had to carry you in from the car, and I wasn't thinking."  
  
"Carry... What the hell...?" Chaz squinted up at Reid, still confused and half-awake. "Novak. Novak was the last interview for the day."  
  
"You should eat something." Reid grabbed the wrapped half-sandwich still sitting on the nightstand and passed it down to Chaz. "There's more food on the table, but eat before you try to get up. I suspect you got into something with Delia Novak, and you weren't in great shape when we got there. You tried to tell us something about her, in the car, but you just fell asleep."  
  
"Luck." Chaz pushed himself up enough to lean on the nightstand and started on the sandwich. "And then what you saw."  
  
"Luck?" Reid asked.  
  
"Not probability, but specifically fixed-odds games of chance with physical objects. Shell games, but not rock-paper-scissors. Roulette, but not poker. She can't cheat at cards, but she'll always draw the right straw. I understand it, but I'm not sure how to simplify it, yet."  
  
"Because you're fucking exhausted, Villette," Langly called out from the table. "Just say enough words that are kind of like what you mean, and we'll figure it out."  
  
"She's cute, but she's probably going to turn into a serial killer," Chaz muttered with his mouth full.  
  
Mary snorted. "You totally have a type. You know that, right?"  
  
"I do," Chaz agreed, between bites, "and this isn't it."  
  
"I don't think you're wrong, but why do you think she's going to turn?" Reid asked, leaning back across the bed to take the bucket of chicken Langly passed to Mary and she held out to him.  
  
"She's scared and angry, and she's not wrong to be. It's really justifiable, and that's how it starts. First you get the urge to do things that might not be the best idea, but nobody could blame you -- those people hurt you, they deserve it. And it just goes on from there. Almost every time, that's the story, and she's in exactly the right place for it. I'm hoping that she doesn't, but she probably will. I'm _really _hoping Idlewood will catch it, before she does any real damage."  
  
"Isn't Idlewood the place you're not supposed to talk about?" Mary asked, once she was pretty sure Chaz was too busy chewing to say anything more.  
  
"There's no polite way to say this, but I'm at least a little surprised you didn't find out about it the hard way."  
  
"Especially after today," Langly agreed. "That's two of us we're sure of, and four more we suspect, out of a total of fifteen survivors that we've been able to locate. Rabbit showed me the numbers. That's a _lot_."  
  
Reid leaned down to set the chicken in Chaz's lap, eyes unfocused as something struggled to surface from the mire of the day's events. "I remember you saying, months ago, that there was no DNA signature for the Anomaly. That means someone checked. Samples were taken and someone ran them. Do the results still exist?"  
  
"Oh, _crap_." Langly stared at Reid, amazed it had taken them this long to consider it. "Delia's. Use Delia's sample for the comparison. She's gonna be going there anyway. That's not going to raise questions about the rest of us. Not right away, anyway."  
  
"There's still going to be questions, later," Mary pointed out. "When all this comes out about Dr Granger's clones, there's going to be a closer look at _all of us_."  
  
"Not if I put a lid on it," Chaz volunteered, still sitting on the floor, trying to eat the fried chicken, before it cooled off too much more. "Remember, I'm strongly suggesting that any anomalous clones we find make a call to a... friend of mine, at Idlewood, because snide remarks about Arkham aside, they actually are specialists in the condition. In the Anomaly, as much as anyone can be. If the two of you don't call in, well... All the clones couldn't be anomalous, right? We already think Johnstone isn't. I'm relatively sure you're not, Doc. Not yet, anyway. And that'll always be it -- not _yet_, right up until it happens."  
  
"You seem pretty sure of that," Mary observed, "but I still don't know why."  
  
"A combination of predisposition and exposure. It's still a little soon to say for sure, but I feel pretty comfortable speculating that Dr Granger was _trying _to produce anomalous children. I'm incredibly uncomfortable with the fact that I'm pretty sure I know why he didn't succeed with all of them." Chaz sank down until his shoulders were level with his knees. "Somebody hand me a drink?"  
  
Reid ducked as a bottle of pineapple juice sailed over his head, bounced off the corner of the other bed, and rolled back to hit Chaz's hip. Chaz picked it up without so much as a question, but Reid knew he was going to ask, later.  
  
"I'm the only living example, that we _know of_, of someone born anomalous." Chaz opened the pineapple juice and took a long drink. "And I think I know why, and I would rather never find proof, but knowing mankind, I know it's going to be proven one way or the other. The Anomaly spreads and evolves through trauma to the target, later the... let's go with 'host'. My father was anomalous," he admitted. "And I don't really want to talk about that, but no one knows when it happened. My mother was not, but _I_ am, and I have always been. And there's only one good reason for that."  
  
Reid knew the whole of it, but he offered a substantially less detailed, potentially less accurate, version, in present company. "Because your mother was pregnant, and the Anomaly took you, instead."  
  
"Something to that effect," Chaz agreed. "And it sounds like a couple of the clones may have been born with it, and some, like Delia, developed it later, and I don't think Dr Granger was doing the traumatising, given the way these women talk about him. I'm not sure Granger knew what the hell he was doing, honestly, but I suspect the original _donors _were anomalous, and he was trying to reproduce them."  
  
Something occurred to Reid. "Lakeland's Valium."  
  
Langly flicked his fingers and stared into space. "Lakeland's the one we're pretty sure was born with it. 'Underweight babies eat a lot' and all that."  
  
"So, to coin a phrase, we're looking at people who are anomalously anomalous," Mary quipped. "Statistical outliers within the larger group."  
  
"Yeah, but we knew that." Langly reached across the table and stole her drink, still staring into space as he took a sip. "Oh, gross. Is that a Dr Pepper?"  
  
"And that's how you know it's _mine_!" Mary smiled brightly and snatched back the cup.  
  
"Is that weird?" Langly asked suddenly.  
  
"That she likes Dr Pepper?" Reid looked at him, confused, but Langly's eyes still didn't come away from whatever only he could see.  
  
"That she likes Dr Pepper and I _don't_."  
  
Mary shook her head. "Protective colouring. I learned to like it in college, because I was surrounded by people who drank Mountain Dew, and I needed something they wouldn't go near. Before that, it was Squirt, but that didn't last long, because it's decaf, and there was only one machine on campus that had it, right next to the Grape Crush. Not even Orange!"  
  
"You have similar enough taste in other things," Chaz muttered from the far side of the bed.  
  
Langly sighed. "Yeah, how about you don't step in that while you're too tired to stand up, Villette?"  
  
There was a long silence.  
  
"Too busy eating to have this argument," Chaz decided, after a while. "What are we doing tomorrow?"  
  
"There's three more interviews, and then we should probably stop and figure out what we have, before we start calling the kids," Reid suggested. "I'm going to suggest we start asking about difficult pregnancies, if we get more 'underweight baby never stops eating' stories, though."  
  
"Yeah, half day, tomorrow," Langly agreed. "Start late, finish early, Villette gets to sleep in."  
  
"I don't really sleep that--"  
  
"You will," Reid promised him.  
  
"Can he really do that?" Mary asked, curiously.  
  
"Yes." Chaz sounded somewhat less than entirely thrilled, but he reached up with the hand that wasn't greasy and patted Reid's knee. "Thanks, Spencer. I feel like I don't say that enough, especially these last few days."  
  
"Don't thank me, yet..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Have a chapter! *throws confetti*
> 
> Sorry that took so long...


	20. Chapter 20

It was dark, at least, when Mary left to drive the hour and change back to York, and Chaz finally got off the floor to find the ridiculous holiday pyjamas he hadn't bothered to wear in Langly's house. But, they were in a hotel and it was probably in his best interest to at least pretend to be dressed in case something went awry. He'd left for Midland before Christmas, so the reindeer had seemed like a good choice, then. Something to keep him from taking it all too seriously, which he supposed he needed now, though he was more concerned he wasn't taking things seriously enough.  
  
He hadn't been sick like this, _screwed up_ like this, since a few months after he'd come back from-- since a few months after he'd shot Beale fourteen times. Fourteen. He wasn't even sure it had taken fourteen shots, but the fewer changes he made, the less chance Beale had to get a grip on the new reality and adjust accordingly. And he'd fucked that up enough times. He'd had the _opportunity _to fuck it up repeatedly. But, he knew he'd win, just like he knew it was going to kill him. He'd always been the outlier. He, _personally_, was a little too strange. And in every scenario, he'd been the survivor. And he knew if he managed to get everyone else out of it, he'd pay for it with his life. And he almost had. He would have, but Falkner was Falkner, and she'd carried him out of just as bad, before. At least with Beale, he hadn't been _bleeding_. But, he'd slipped into a coma, before she could peel him off the floor. And he felt the blood-red white elephant splintering around him, the gift he'd never wanted showering him with razor shards of memory, very little of it his own. And in that moment, he thought he was dying. And for once in his life, he let it come.  
  
He still wasn't sure if he'd survived because they loved him, or if it was because the Anomaly wanted its pound of flesh. Both, he supposed. It was _hard _to kill a gamma.  
  
But, this was like going through it all again. Weaver hadn't gotten much out of him, but something had definitely been left behind. Weaver had meant to kill him, _tried _to kill him. But, it was hard to kill a gamma, _even like that_.  
  
And after a moment, not for the first time, Chaz was even more disturbed by something he'd done, when he was still coming to terms with what he'd become. Something he hadn't even meant to do, but it got away from him. They'd believed in their own false fires and jumped, just like their victims had, and _he'd done that_. He'd done what Weaver had been trying to do, and he'd done it by _accident_. And something smug and warm in the back of his head pointed out that was why he'd known he could take Weaver head-on and win. The first time had been a horrifying mistake. The second time, he knew _exactly_ what he was doing, and how not to lose control.  
  
Control. Right. Where the hell had his gone?  
  
He felt Spencer's hand against his back, a far different sensation than anyone else's hand.  
  
"That's why you're tired," Reid said, quietly. "You're still fighting your own memories. You know how many people didn't survive what Weaver did to them. We helped you work it out. You're still fighting it. You do still have control. That's why you're tired."  
  
Chaz turned, slipping an arm around Reid's waist, burying his face against Reid's neck, grounding himself in the feel of a body he hadn't known until _much _later. "How much of that did you see?"  
  
"Not much. There's a lot of symbols I don't have a context for, so they don't unfold. Mostly, I got that you're very intent on not dying and that you feel like you've lost control. You blame Weaver, but you also blame yourself for once doing something like Weaver, but that was an accident with a serial killer, and you're sure that doesn't make it okay." Reid's other hand joined the first against Chaz's sharp spine. "And on some level, you're right. It's the accident part that's the problem, far more than the killers. They were in the middle of trying to kill someone, from what I can see, and you stopped them. Someone else might have shot them. They'd be just as dead, but it would've been _intentional_."  
  
Chaz nodded. "You get it."  
  
"Not to make the situation worse, but ... what were you so angry with Reyes about?" Reid asked, and Chaz froze, eyelashes scraping against Reid's ear as he blinked a few times.  
  
"Which time?"  
  
"Just before the nightmares started, last night, you started... I'm pretty sure that was a memory, not a dream. The texture was wrong for a dream. You were in a hospital, and he was there, and you told him to thank god that he was alive. You were furious with him and... I think he didn't know you'd saved him? Didn't understand?"  
  
"Neither. Both. He didn't know, and I couldn't explain it, so I let him fill in the blanks. He always thought I meant that I'd killed the most dangerous thing we'd ever laid eyes on, before it could turn on him and his daughter. I mean, that also applied, but it wasn't what I meant. Not then. I meant I'd saved him from things he'd never see." Chaz's head dipped another couple of inches, until his forehead rested on Reid's shoulder. "I'd seen a future where he'd been killed trying to protect his daughter from a mob. Pitchforks and torches, except they had guns and flash grenades. His daughter's anomalous, but she's harmless. She can speak any language she's been exposed to someone who speaks, to the same fluency. It's amazing, but there are ten-year-old kids who speak seven languages without the Anomaly. It was on the news, when it happened. I saw it all. And when he walked into that room to give me a stern and disappointed talking to about what Brady thought he saw that night, what Brady _really actually did see_ that night, I just... I really lost my shit with him. And if you saw it, you know that didn't look like much, but there wasn't enough of me left to give him the kind of hell I wanted to. That and he'd probably have packed my ass off to Idlewood for the rest of eternity, if I had."  
  
"He almost did," Reid pointed out.  
  
Chaz snorted. "Horseshoes and hand grenades. He _didn't_."  
  
"Come to bed." Reid nudged him with one arm.  
  
"Fuck me." The words were out before Chaz could consider them, but on second thought, they were exactly what he meant.  
  
"I'm not so sure that's a good idea. You're exhausted."  
  
Chaz nodded. "And I'm probably going to fall asleep in the middle. But, it's going to be a good dream. I need something to hold on to, something _here_, something _now_. I need something I'm going to feel, something that will cut through the nightmares because it doesn't belong there." He could feel Reid slipping away from him. "I don't just want _a fuck_, Spencer. I want _you_. And him, too, but he's busy, so I'd get you all to myself, for a little while. I'm too tired for both of you at the same time. I'd elbow one of you in something important."  
  
Reid swallowed a laugh. "You mean you'd elbow _him_. You're usually a little more aware of where I am."  
  
"That is _exactly _the problem. I'd move for you, but I'd be me."  
  
"You should really lie down. On the right bed, this time."  
  
"Yes. I should." Chaz left a kiss on Reid's cheek, as he pulled back. "Will you be joining me?"  
  
Reid took a moment to answer. "I think I will. Tell me if it helps as much as you think it will."  
  
Chaz tossed the covers back and stretched out on the bed with a long, satisfied groan. "I think you'll know."  
  
"Tell me anyway." Reid sat on the edge of the bed, watching Langly still working at the table, brow crinkled and fingers flicking.  
  
"You just want me to flatter you," Chaz teased, following Reid's gaze because he really was too tired not to. "You just want me to tell you how much I love your cock."  
  
"More interested in whether it'll work for me, one day," Reid muttered, still trying to decipher what Langly was working on, from the motion of his eyes and hands. "And do you?"  
  
"Well, it's not mine. What did I say about that?" Chaz figured Langly out first, calling across the room, "Does Hafs know you're doing that?"  
  
"Stay out of my head, Villette." Langly sounded annoyed.  
  
"I'm not in your head. You're just that obvious. And you should let her know, because she set up the security on that network, and she _will _find out. Better if she knows it's you, you're with me, and she doesn't have to care."  
  
"She's not going to mistake me for anything else, and I don't think anyone else is going to spot me. I'm at least that good." Langly's eyes finally focused on the bed furthest from him. "Just let me get these and send them to Mary, and I'll come over there and throw myself into the futile struggle against morning wood."  
  
"We're starting without you," Reid warned.  
  
"Then maybe I'll find a reason to procrastinate a little longer. The view's great, from here."  
  
"Hey, if you're procrastinating, get the coffee from the bathroom, would you?" Chaz fluttered his eyes at Langly.  
  
"When did you know?" Reid asked.  
  
"About the time you handed me a bucket of chicken instead of a cup of coffee. I'd care more, but I couldn't smell it, which means you're not drinking it either." Chaz's hands worked on the buttons down the front of his own pyjama top. "Of course, I take the time to put these on, and then I decide I want to feel your skin."  
  
Across the room, Langly's chair creaked, and they both knew he wasn't paying quite as much attention to his work as he had been.  
  
"Sometimes, we surprise even ourselves." Reid finally moved to kneel across Chaz's hips, once he was bare-chested, and it was much to his surprise that Chaz went for his pants and not his buttons. "I'm not--"  
  
"I know." There was the self-conscious half-smile that almost never happened between the two of them, any more. Chaz really was tired. "Let me help."  
  
Across the room, Langly backed out of Idlewood's network, having decided not to send anything, yet, but just hang on to it, until they had the results from Delia's swab. If he sent them, he'd realised, he'd be putting the files on a network much less secure than the one they'd come off. There were solutions to that, but this was the easiest one. Besides, if he just sat here and looked distracted, he could watch the hot feds get it on, for a bit, before he joined them. And that still sent a shiver down his spine. They wanted him. Still. Months later, both of them still wanted to get him naked and fuck him until he couldn't feel his toes. And he loved every second of it.  
  
But, right then, he thought he'd just watch them, for a bit. Watch the way Reid's arm trembled, holding him against the wall, the way Villette's throat moved when he swallowed. They'd even left the light on for him, that dim glow at just the right height to sharpen Villette's cheeks, to make the spit glisten along Reid's dick. The scars on Villette's wrist stood out in sharp relief where his hand gripped Reid's hip. Langly wished he could take a picture. Half a second later, he remembered he could.  
  
Chaz kept his eyes closed, and that blindness echoed back to him. Like this, they were perfect. Like this, they were only themselves and each other, and there was nothing else that mattered, beyond the amplification of the pleasure between them. It belonged to both of them, exactly as it should. He swallowed again, and felt the muscles of their thighs tremble. He was so hard, and every motion of his mouth felt so good against Spencer's cock. Was it even fair to make that distinction, here, now, like this? There were times it might be important, but he wasn't sure this was one of them. He wasn't sure until Spencer suddenly pulled back, a hand interjecting itself between them. Not his hand. That he could be sure of.  
  
He squinted up at Spencer's stunned face and coughed into his own hand.  
  
"If you expect me to put this anywhere else, you should stop." The words were a breathy whisper, amused and thrilled, but Chaz could feel the regret behind them.  
  
"You know he's probably carrying the answer to that problem. I can't see him leaving home without it, if he meant to see you." Chaz coughed again and tipped his head back, rubbing his throat.  
  
"As tempting as that is, in theory, I know how those work, and with the two of us, I have not entirely irrational concerns that my penis would fall off. I might try it with him. With you, it's dangerous!" Reid sank down and back, coming to rest on Chaz's thighs. "Besides, I think more than about three orgasms between the two of us before breakfast might leave us both in no shape to continue the interviews, tomorrow. Do you have any idea how tired I was--"  
  
"On your birthday? When I was in the office with your team?" Chaz's eyes sparkled with amusement.  
  
"Okay, that was not fair of me. That was not fair at all. But, in my defence, I had no idea we could do that."  
  
"Neither did I. Still think we can do this, though... if you're up for it. In which case, get off me, so I can stop wearing pants." Chaz bounced one thigh, and Reid took the hint.  
  
"Where did we put the--" Reid started to ask, as he finished untangling himself from his own half-removed pyjamas, but Langly cut him off.  
  
"My bag. Under the other bed. Same place as always."  
  
Chaz managed to kick the blankets down trying to kick his pants off, and as he glanced over at Langly, he realised he didn't feel the urge to cover himself, to do something to make it look like there was more of him than there was. He was the thinnest of them, but not the lightest, and neither of them treated him as if he were any more fragile than he claimed to be. Well... mostly. There was a huge difference between 'I'm afraid I'll break you' and 'Go the fuck to bed, jackass'.  
  
Langly caught his eye. "You're staring."  
  
"Sorry, should I not be imagining you naked? I know you're not working on the same thing you were twenty minutes ago. Is that a sign you've decided not to join us?"  
  
"No, that's a sign I know better than to move in any way that might end in Reid getting bit." Langly looked Chaz over appreciatively, something that never stopped giving Chaz that flutter in his chest -- Langly knew him and wanted him _anyway_. "Was that an invitation?"  
  
"If you want it to be one." Chaz pulled the blankets back up as Reid got back into bed, trying to keep the warmth in, as he shivered at every touch of that skin that wasn't quite his against his own. "If you're willing to give up the network _and _your pants for a while..."  
  
"Come to bed," Reid murmured, absently, between kisses pressed to Chaz's neck and chest. "We want you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be one chapter, but it got entirely the fuck out of hand, and I want at least part of it off my desk, so now it's TWO chapters. Enjoy your slightly disarranged porn. This and the following chapter are totally a gift for OverlordKye, who needed a stiff break from the overwhelming heterosexuality of the local holiday season.


	21. Chapter 21

And that was what did it. Langly was on his feet so fast he nearly flipped the chair he'd been sitting in. His shoes were gone before he'd made it to the edge of the closer bed, which he leaned down to retrieve something from under, and his jeans decorated the floor before he made it to the bed against the wall, the bed in which his ridiculously hot boyfriend perched sphinx-like over their weirdly-attractive lover.  
  
Chaz tipped his head, and Langly took the hint, stretching out along the edge of the bed to accept the offered kiss, or maybe to give a kiss in response to that silent request. Not like it mattered, really, the point was, he was getting kissed, and he was absolutely and entirely about that continuing. Next to him, he could feel Reid shift down, and the shiver that shot through Villette, the sudden soft sound of pleasure that echoed off the inside of his mouth, suggested what Reid might have gotten up to. Still, their hands were on each other, and not on him. That was probably going to change, soon, and he was listening for the crinkle of plastic that would suggest he was about to become the meat in this sandwich. And he definitely had a whole new appreciation for sandwiches and meat, these last few months.  
  
And then Reid moved again, and Langly was completely confused, breaking the kiss to figure out what had just happened.  
  
"Okay, first of all, we should all move this way, because you're going to fall off the bed." Reid gestured to the wall, from Chaz's other side, and then backed up further toward it.  
  
"Yeah, but if I'm supposed to be in the middle of this fucksandwich, that puts Villette's back toward the edge of the bed, and we all know that's a bad idea," Langly pointed out as Chaz moved closer to Reid.  
  
Chaz cleared his throat. "You're not in the middle. I am... Is that--"  
  
"Are you _sure _that's a good idea?" Langly asked, knowing how hesitant Chaz was to have anyone behind him. And it was Reid, and he knew they'd done this before, but they'd done it _without him_, and now Chaz was fucked up and tired.  
  
"It's a great idea," Chaz insisted. "I'm still going to give you the warning. If you see something that looks like glass, or you start having flashbacks, do me a favour and close your eyes, roll backwards off the bed, and stay there until one of us tells you it's okay."  
  
"Is that a joke?"  
  
Reid cleared his throat. "Not... really. It's just a precaution, though."  
  
"_Glass?_"  
  
"It's just an illusion, but it's a sign something has gone wrong, and you should move away and not look. Like, 'pillar of salt' don't look," Chaz warned, holding a hand out for Langly to join them.  
  
"And this is your idea of a good idea?" Langly looked unconvinced.  
  
"It's really unlikely. I'm not that kind of stressed out, but I am tired enough that unexpected things might happen. If you're not sure you want to be part of this, I don't blame you, but as with so many things, if you just duck and cover in the event something goes wrong, you'll be fine."  
  
"And what about him?" Langly pointed at Reid.  
  
"I'm actually _why_ you'll be fine." Reid shrugged, not wanting to take the time to explain, _now_. "It's part of that evil twins thing. It'll only take us a few minutes to fix it, if things don't go as expected."  
  
"So, basically, it's like getting it on with the cat in the room, except instead of a cat, it's a fucking tarrasque."  
  
Chaz held up a hand. "Beholder, at the worst."  
  
And they watched the pieces go together in Langly's head, the light coming on behind his eyes. "You're trying to stay out of my head, and you're afraid you're going to slip."  
  
That was the easiest answer, and Chaz went for it. "Yes. And I don't have the kind of connection with you that I do with him, so if you put the side of the bed between us, you should be okay. As long as I can't see you, you should be fine."  
  
"You scare the shit out of me and half kill my boner to tell me you're trying to stay out of my head, and you're not sure you can do it with both of us banging you like a cellar door in a tornado. You could've just said that. I'm really okay with 'Hey, here's how to not let me accidentally read your mind if I freak out while we're boning.'"  
  
Chaz wiggled his fingers at Langly again. "So, come here, and let me resurrect the boner for you... What cleric level is 'raise boner'?"  
  
"Lord Manhammer has never travelled with a cleric with that skill, so I have no damn idea. I like it, though. Should've been in the Book of Erotic whatever the hell that was." Langly edged into position, running his fingers down Chaz's arm. "Can't say I ever saw you playing a cleric, though."  
  
"Okay, either the two of you knock it off, or I'm getting up," Reid threatened, half-heartedly, still trying to straighten out the blankets.  
  
"I thought you were already up. Wasn't that--"  
  
Chaz cut Langly off with a kiss, reaching back to run a hand down Reid's thigh. A series of concepts and images passed between them, silently, and with a nudge of encouragement and the sensation of Langly grinding against their thigh, Reid pressed his fingers into Chaz, listening to the muffled sounds of desire nearly lost in the kiss.  
  
"More," Chaz demanded, turning his head just enough to make clear which of them he was talking to. Not that he had to talk at all, to Reid, but some words felt better to say, even when the exact meaning was conveyed no worse without them. There was something about the way the body reacted to sound, he'd noticed, something about hearing it, feeling it.  
  
"Not yet," Reid murmured against his back, lips pressed against the top of a scar.  
  
"He's a fucking tease," Langly huffed, rolling his eyes and winding his leg around Chaz's.  
  
"I always follow through," Reid insisted mildly, licking along the edge of the scar and letting the sensation and gaps in it along his own back guide his tongue. A scrape of teeth and a quick nip to hold off the nausea -- he'd forgotten about that. How had he forgotten about that? He brought up his free hand and cautiously scratched along the inner edges of the scars, feeling the tension drain out of Chaz's body, first, and then return as need, as desire, as a firm grip on Langly's ass.  
  
He could feel the desire coursing through him, as if it were his own, and in some part, it was. But, the vivid, burning ache for the touch of his hands, the warmth of his skin, that was all Chaz, and unshielded like this, it was a bit disconcerting. As he'd said a hundred times, he didn't find himself attractive, but if he just let go of the line between them he wouldn't be able to tell, any more. There would be that other thing that they were both attracted to, as if the best of both of them could be something worth having, if only it wasn't attached to and split between the two of them. Not that he found much unattractive about Chaz, just the way he was.  
  
And _that_ got a push back -- raw lust and Langly's incredible legs. In heels. And that, Reid knew, was definitely not _his_ memory, but for just a moment, he wished it was. Not that he hadn't seen Langly in heels, just the once, but his focus had been on other things, at the time -- a fact he now harboured some regrets about. But, he let those thoughts distract him -- they could both agree on Langly -- as he pressed another finger into Chaz, feeling that burst of glitter behind his eyes as he pressed just where he could feel Chaz wanted it. Just where _he_ wanted it.  
  
Then the last wall fell, whoever's side it had been on, and he knew all of what Chaz wanted, wanted almost all of it just the same way. Almost. There were a few things that -- vanished, before he could look too closely at them, and he blew them off as the sort of ridiculous things the brain sometimes proposes while steeped with lust, that would never be more than a disconcerting flash. Other things were much more important, things like the smooth, warm flesh against his fingers, the rough and demanding touch of Langly's hands, the smell and taste of Chaz's skin. A few moments more, until the half-smothered sounds from Chaz's mouth turned to frustration, and then Reid offered an unmistakeable sensation and a small inquisitive sound.  
  
"Yes!" The word wrenched out of Chaz, as if it had to be dragged the whole length of his body, and he shivered with its passage, pulling Langly closer against him. He flexed his thigh a few times, and Langly shuddered before he untangled their legs, making room for Chaz to press one leg not just against him but tight between his legs. There was a brief pause as Chaz studied Langly's face. "You okay?"  
  
"Uhhh... yeah." Langly nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm naked in bed with two hot feds and a puddle of my own spooge. I'm kind of fucking amazing."  
  
And Chaz tried to brace himself against the awareness of exactly how amazing Langly was, in that moment, but the only way he could let go of that utterly dazzled feeling -- one he was surprised to discover he recognised and shared -- was to close his eyes and drown himself in the sensation of Reid slowly pushing into him. They both felt that from both sides, the reflections echoing back and forth between them, nearly infinite, a kaleidoscope of sensation he was more than happy to add to, dragging Langly into another kiss, feeling the wet spot that pooled against his hip and overflowed onto the bed beneath them as Langly shivered and tensed again, clenching tight around his fingers.  
  
This belonged to this time. This belonged to this version of reality. There had been nothing like this in that future he wished he'd never lived through. Nothing like this even in his wildest dreams, until he'd gotten dragged into Fitzgerald. He supposed he owed this to Hafs, and he'd remind her of it the next time she complained about Langly being loud. It was, after all, her own damned fault. Sort of. He'd probably have done it without her 'help', but with it, he could blame her for her own problems with how it had turned out. His problems ... were not something he was going to think about, right now. Same problems as usual, with a relationship, if somewhat fewer of them. Dramatically fewer, if he was wholly honest with himself. There was still something unsettling at being on the wrong end of his own reflections, but Spencer was still comfortingly perfect, despite -- no, _because of_ \-- his imperfections. Perfect shattered edges, like another part of the same broken bowl. They fit each other so well it was terrifying, and he still fought the urge to cut and run, while it was all still good memories. He was getting too old for that shit.  
  
And he was getting fucked much too well to think about any of this, right now.  
  
But, they did fit together well, not just in mind but in body. He loved the way Spencer filled his nightmares with light, filled his body with the kind of warmth that only came from sleeping next to another person, and he wondered, idly, if it was possible to fill the aching hole in his soul by taking Spencer's cock until his ass ached, instead. Hadn't worked yet, but was that really a reason to stop trying? He was so close, his body twisting and straining, even as his mind wandered, that it would have taken a hell of a lot to get him to stop trying, right then. He turned toward the light, toward the heat, and everything fell open, leaving his mind nearly as bare as his body, his darkest and most miserable secrets protected only by the blinding fire of his own lust, which sounded like something out of a godawful romance novel, even as the idea flashed through his battered consciousness.  
  
And then he just couldn't care.  
  
Reid could feel Chaz's body tighten against him, around him, every twitch, every twist, every electric flicker mirrored in his own flesh. This was as it should be. This was as it always was, between them, and then suddenly the connection went cold, but not as cold as it had the first time Chaz had passed out in the middle of an orgasm. The door still hung open, even if the lights were out, and he perched cautiously at the edge of Chaz's mind, radiating contentment. Hopefully, eventually, they'd both get enough sleep to be functional, tomorrow.  
  
He wedged himself up on one elbow, looking down at Langly, who lay soaked in sweat and less-mentionable things, tucked under Chaz's chin. "You good?"  
  
"Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, I'm... I'm pretty good." Langly tried to pull his own sweaty hair out of his face. "In the morning, though? Just you and me. In the shower, if you want to save some time."  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Hm?" Langly looked up, the whole of his attention focused on Reid.  
  
"I love you."


	22. Chapter 22

Chaz woke to the sound of his own voice, a desperate, ragged sound of desire driven out of him as every muscle in his body clenched like his life depended on it. It took him a few seconds to take stock of the situation as he lay shuddering in the fresh wet spot, every nerve on fire. No, contrary to his expectations, Langly wasn't there. But, the shower was running, which meant he and Spencer were probably in it. He reached out tentatively, and Spencer welcomed him back, expectantly, apologetically.  
  
No, sharing that had been completely intentional. _Waking him up_ hadn't been.  
  
He kicked the blankets off and wrapped a sheet around himself, unwilling to get dressed until he got a shower, and he knew better than to step into this one. Not today. They needed each other. They needed time to remember they were in love. They needed time to not worry about _him_. He needed a cup of coffee, and he was thrilled to find they'd remembered to put it back before they'd shut the door.

* * *

An hour later, Chaz was almost dressed, and Langly had finally figured out where he'd thrown his glasses, the night before. Chaz had been careful to keep to himself, as much as he could, in that time. He spent most of his own shower sorting through the dreams he could remember at all, and all he could find were delicate and surreal scenes in which there was a sense of something terrifying just outside the frame, but it could never get in. And there was a solid certainty of that, in all of them. No one had invited it, and it couldn't come in, and every time he'd had the sense to wonder if there wasn't something wrong with that proposition, the scene had changed to something wholly else, and the sense of comfort, of shelter had returned.  
  
And now, with his second cup of coffee in hand, he finally asked a question. "Did you sleep at _all_?"  
  
Reid shrugged, finally pouring himself a cup. "Three or four hours. Enough."  
  
"_When?_"  
  
"When you stopped dreaming. It happened pretty quickly. You were exhausted. I sat up a little longer to make sure you were still alive, and then I went to sleep. Your nightmares almost always wake me."  
  
Chaz winced. "Sorry."  
  
"If I hadn't wanted them to, I'd have closed the door. The purpose was to make sure you actually slept, because you haven't been. It's more than just last night, and we both know it." Reid gave Chaz a pointed look over the rim of his cup, as he took a long swallow. "And I'll be doing it again, tonight, because I can afford it, and right now, you can't."  
  
"I know you're right. I hate it, but I know you're right," Chaz admitted, staring into his coffee. He finally looked back up at Reid. "Promise me you'll tell me when you've had enough. We can do this, but I absolutely _cannot _hurt you. I can't. I can't handle it."  
  
"I'm not going to let that happen. We made it through the first night. As long as you can sleep..."  
  
Chaz nodded, eyes back on his coffee. "Thank you. Again. Still."  
  
Langly bounced a Twinkie off Chaz's forehead. "Not actually worse than Byers. You're not shitfaced and crying. Just eat something so you don't die."  
  
Looking like he might swallow his lips, Chaz eyed Reid as he picked up the Twinkie. "Not shitfaced and crying." He nodded slowly, watching Reid use his coffee cup to hide a smile. "Lucky for you, that's not a condition I visit often."  
  
"Like never, you mean." Langly rolled his eyes. "Thank god."  
  
Reid very determinedly did not laugh, remembering Chaz several beers down and sulking miserably in bed after Mary had given up on him, the first time. Langly and Mary had been out on the town, at the time, and Chaz had been... at least less drunk by the time they returned. He said nothing. He didn't need to.  
  
Chaz cleared his throat and licked his sticky fingers. "Last three today, and start calling the kids, tomorrow? I'd rather start with the kids today--"  
  
"No." Surprisingly, Langly cut him off before Reid could. "No, we're doing three interviews, and then you're going the hell back to bed, Villette, even if I have to shave my legs again to keep you there. You saw what happened with Delia. If the rest of them are like that, you can't be going into those with your brain leaking out your ears."  
  
Reid pointed at Langly and nodded. "We should give them another day, just to make sure they've heard from their parents, if they're going to."  
  
"And if they run?" Chaz asked, thinking of the way he might've responded if he hadn't already been an agent, when he converted.  
  
Langly bounced another Twinkie off Chaz's face. "They're not suspects, Villette. They're _evidence_."  
  
"Frank? You'd run." Chaz grabbed the second Twinkie, hoping Mary showed up with breakfast, because he was pretty sure they weren't going to be able to get anything before she got there, and he knew he shouldn't have been eating Langly's stash, even if it had been bounced off his cheek.  
  
"I'd have an excuse. The last time the government, and I mean not the two of you, knew where I was, I had an _assassin _on my doorstep. Fibbies I don't know show up, and _shit yes_ I'm running!" Langly shook his head. "We're talking about people with straight jobs and real lives. Real people who are still talking to their parents, living in the city they were born in... Those people don't run, if they don't think you've caught them doing something. And, uh... we're not even interested in them, as far as they know. We're interested in their mothers' obstetrician."  
  
"I'd run," Chaz finally admitted.  
  
"That's different," Reid finished his coffee. "You know what would happen if you didn't. You know what you are, and you've seen what happens if the wrong people decide you're dangerous. Which, to be entirely honest, you _are_."  
  
"And you're still not afraid of me."  
  
"You've never given me a reason to be."  
  
Langly got up to answer the knock at the door, having followed Mary up on the security cameras, leaving the two feds eyeing each other like cautious cats.

* * *

As it turned out, Stewart was a bust. Only the father was still alive, and he'd been moved to a care facility, the year before. No visitors that hadn't been approved by his son. But, Chaz noticed how quickly Reid withdrew into himself as they'd come up to the building, suddenly opaque, his face still and his eyes hollow. He hadn't said a word, but Chaz saw the way Langly stayed close to him, a hand on his back as they left. There was a story he hadn't been told, and he wasn't going to ask, though he had a feeling about it, after the few short sentences he'd heard about Reid's mother.  
  
Still, the younger Stewart was still on their list. They'd get something, and hopefully it would be more than the Langlys had.  
  
Campbell, though, he thought would never end. From the moment they arrived at the door and heard the pair of dogs yapping, Chaz was sure this was going to be one of those interviews he was going to wish he waited in the car for. Mr and Mrs Campbell were alive and well, looking like exactly the sort of cheerful grandparents one saw in Christmas specials from the eighties.  
  
The dogs, of course, didn't like him.  
  
Muffy and Fifi were a pair of Yorkshire terriers that treated Langly and Mary like part of the family, ignored Reid almost entirely, and yapped viciously at Chaz, nipping at his ankles. Mrs Campbell held on to Muffy, but Fifi decided she belonged in Langly's lap, and nothing would move her. Langly just smiled awkwardly and shot a horrified look at Reid.  
  
By the middle of the conversation, Chaz was sure they weren't actually lying about anything, though they were smoothing over the difficult parts of a perfectly normal family life. 'We don't argue!' Mrs Campbell had insisted, as he picked up the memories of every time she'd snapped at their son over girls, school... eating too much.   
  
'You'll end up like your father!' The words echoed in Chaz's head and he finally opened his mouth. "Mrs Campbell, can you tell us if your son ever had any issues with eating? Maybe eating too much and losing weight?"  
  
Her hand crept into her husband's and curled tightly around his fingers. She didn't look at Chaz -- at any of them. "Well, you know how boys are! Always eating!"  
  
His head filled with visions that reminded him of his own childhood, but in all of them, Jason Campbell seemed to be a teenager. He hadn't been born with it, then. Still, the taste of straight mayonnaise sat heavy in his mouth as he felt Doreen's horror at catching her son in the middle of the night with a spoon in the jar.  
  
"That's what we're worried about, Mrs Campbell," Mary said, quietly. "There's a metabolic disorder that's more common in Dr Granger's kids. Not all of us have it, but a statistically significant number -- a lot of us -- do. We're just trying to help the rest of our, uhm..."  
  
"Family, technically, I think." Langly shrugged. Fifi growled and yapped at Chaz, again.  
  
"Well, our Jason doesn't have any disorder!" Mrs Campbell insisted. "The doctors said he's just fine."  
  
Hours after they first arrived, they were finally out of the overpoweringly warm house and the smell of dog. Chaz just rested his head on the steering wheel for a long time, and Reid sat next to him, looking sympathetically out the window, at nothing in particular.  
  
"You look like you're gonna puke," Mary said, bluntly.  
  
"I'm not. Is it lunch yet? Can it be lunch?"  
  
"You practically cleared that lady's dessert tray, Chaz. You sure you're okay?"  
  
"I haven't eaten anything that's not a pastry, today, and neither has your cousin. I want a ham. I want a _salad_. I just want something that's not made of butter and sugar." Chaz finally sat up and started the car.  
  
"Yeah, you're gonna puke," Mary decided. "I'm a doctor. I know these things."  
  
Chaz did not puke. But, he did let Mary drive, while he and Langly worked their way through a tailgate party's worth of roasted chicken and three-bean salad, in the back seat. He left the potato salad to Langly, unwilling to even consider things made with mayo, after what he'd seen at the Campbell house. Mary had a large bag of chips, and Reid managed to eat half a surprisingly good ham and cheese sandwich, before concerns about dripping mustard on himself took over.  
  
By the time they got to the Evans place, Chaz looked a little less like he was going to blow chunks, according to Langly, but the whole car smelled like chicken, and Reid wasn't sure they didn't, too. There were, he supposed, worse things to smell like, far less professional things than lunch. On the dim side, it looked like Ken Evans had decided to shovel the walk, and had stopped shovelling to watch the people in the rental that had just pulled up outside his house.  
  
Chaz tried to look like he wasn't still wiping chicken grease off his fingers as he got out of the car, and then just gave up and jammed his hands into his coat pockets, following Reid. One more interview, and then he'd run the numbers. And then, and only then, he decided, would he let Reid talk him back into bed. He got ahead, when he let Reid hold the gate for him, and realised that he was the lead on this case. Right. His case, not Reid's.  
  
"Hi, we're looking for Hannah Evans. Have we got the right house?" he made the effort to look non-threatening, as the man with the shovel sized him up.  
  
"She'd have said if she was expecting somebody--"  
  
"She's not expecting us. We were just hoping to catch up with her, while we were still in Lincoln." Chaz's hand came out of his pocket, and unfolded his badge. "Agent Chaz Villette, FBI, and my partner Dr Spencer Reid. It's nothing to be concerned about. We think she might have known someone we're interested in, maybe thirty or forty years ago. We're just looking for some background on an old case."  
  
"Thirty or forty years? And you haven't caught the guy, yet?" Ken Evans looked less than impressed.  
  
"New evidence recently came to light." Chaz shrugged, casually. "So, Mr Evans, is your wife home?"  
  
"Why do you think I'm Mr Evans?"  
  
Reid cleared his throat. "Because we've seen the picture on your drivers licence."  
  
Ken looked back and forth between them, then shook his head and laughed. "Here, I'll walk you up to the house, so she doesn't lay a dozen eggs when somebody knocks."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE. I did not forget I was writing this! I just took some time off to write a kinkmeme fill and do the things people actually pay me to do. Updates should return to a more usual sort of sporadic as I get more work off my desk.


	23. Chapter 23

Chaz turned his laptop, as if anyone else at the table would have the faintest idea what they were looking at. "Well, if Granger's plan was to produce anomalous children, he actually succeeded admirably, at a glance. Anomalous parents, then, may go further to predisposition than we thought, assuming that's where the initial samples came from."  
  
"But, it's still not all of us," Mary reminded him.  
  
"_Yet_."  
  
"Okay, but we _don't_ know where the samples came from. We _don't_ know who the donors are." Langly eyed the ratty strips of duct tape holding the edges of the screen together and shot Chaz a long-suffering look. "It could just as easily be something about the procedure, which we also know nothing about. We know what it's _supposed _to be. We know what legitimate research was published on the subject and what fertility clinics have been doing since the mid-eighties. We know -- some of us know -- how to do this with cows. We have no idea what the hell Granger was actually doing, and the mothers were all unconscious for it."  
  
Reid held up a hand. "There has to be a reason he kept using the same genetic base, but we don't know what that reason is."  
  
"Nazis," Mary coughed into her fist.  
  
"For your sake, I hope not." Reid gave her a long look.  
  
Langly spread his hands as if framing a headline. "Daughter of Nazi Supermen Working for CDC."  
  
"Son of Nazi Supermen Working for FBI," she shot back. "Okay, so we hope it's not Nazis, but ... look at us. Aside from the fact that neither of us can see more than like two feet in front of our faces, we kind of are the Aryan ideal. Smart, tall, blond haired, blue eyed..."  
  
Langly rolled his eyes and pointed at his nose. "We're some kind of Scandinavian, like half of Nebraska. It wouldn't even be weird, except we're _clones_."  
  
"And you look nothing like your parents," Chaz pointed out. "That's something that could've raised red flags, somewhere along the line, but none of the parents have said anything about people not thinking the kids were theirs."  
  
"Because aside from Mrs Moore, they're all _white_." Reid didn't look thrilled with the conclusion, but it was one of those things you picked up after long enough looking at crime statistics. "And Mrs Moore would easily pass as a nanny, to people who didn't know her. People ask questions about white parents with non-white children, or non-white _men_ with white children. Nobody asks questions about white parents with white children, even if they don't look very much alike, and very few people ask about non-white women with white children, under the assumption they're nannies or housekeepers. It's not a _good _assumption, but it's a cultural expectation, though moreso in places that are a little less overwhelmingly white than the majority of Nebraska."  
  
Chaz nodded and sighed. "I know. I really do." He stretched his arm down the table and wiggled his fingers, and Mary slid the nearest takeout box down the table to him. "But, again, we still have no sense of the donors, beyond the fact that they're probably Scandinavian and there's a decent chance they're anomalous. We have no records, and the project lead is dead."  
  
"What we do have is evidence." Langly wasn't quite fast enough to grab an egg roll from the box without Chaz smacking his hand. "We've got one sample, and we're probably going to end up with a few more."  
  
"Three. We have three," Mary corrected. "Yours and mine. And of those three, two of you are anomalous."  
  
"I'm interested in Leda Johnstone," Chaz admitted, with his mouth full. "We have ten clones identified, almost for sure, out of seventeen possible, and she's the one with the least anomalous potential. We know Delia Novak is a gamma. We can be relatively sure about Jack Lakeland, Jason Campbell, Loren Evans, Mike Davis, and Auria Varga. Jeanine Moore and Hugh Stewart, we're still mostly in the dark about -- we're not even sure Hugh's a clone. So, out of ten identified clones, we have two almost definitely non-anomalous, two very definitely anomalous, and five showing potentially anomalous symptoms. If Leda's actually an alpha, I'd be interested in comparing her experiences with yours, and maybe running a more granular comparison."  
  
"Alfarsi's definitely in, as long as she gets a paper out of it. I told her I can't promise her she can publish it freely, but we know a research group that would be extremely interested in seeing what she comes up with." Langly stared at his clenched hands, for a moment. "And I have the sequences and comparison data from Idlewood's last study. I have it. No one else, yet. You have to tell me how we're doing this, Villette, because this is your 'top secret on pain of death', not mine... for once."  
  
"Given that we have no genetic basis for the Anomaly identified, I think I'm okay letting Dr Alfarsi have the sequences for comparison purposes. We just don't tell her about it. We say we've got some more people who show a similar metabolic disorder to a large number of the clones, and see if she can pick anything out -- see if she can pick out any more _clones_. I don't think we have any of you, but I haven't known every face in Idlewood in a lot of years."  
  
"Okay, speaking of Idlewood, that's for like... super dangerous gammas, right? You go there because you _killed somebody_."  
  
Chaz slowly cocked his head, giving an exaggerated nod. "Comparisons may have been made to Arkham Asylum."  
  
"Okay, but, you just gave a card to the Novaks. I don't think you really have a facility that's geared to handle what we're about to do to it. I might have taken a peek at some other things while I was trying to find the DNA tests. Curiosity. I didn't break anything. It's a high-security nuthouse. It's not designed for outpatient work, and sure as hell not on the scale we're about to drag in."  
  
"That has crossed my mind, but I really don't know what to do about it. We have the benefit of none of these people actually living in Virginia, so it's unlikely they'll end up _going _there, unless things get serious. But, Idlewood is, and has always been, something we can't even put on paper for funding purposes. It's a bleeding budget hole, and it's _all we have_." Chaz shrugged sharply, frustration obvious in both his face and the motion.  
  
Langly kicked his chair back and crossed his ankles on the edge of the table. "Hey, _dumbass_, I'm a rich gamma, and I've funded free clinics and medical research facilities before. If you can staff it, I can make it happen. We'll name it after my twin cousin, here, because without her, we wouldn't even have figured out this was happening. The Langly Centre for Idiopathic Metabolic Disorders, or some shit."  
  
"Hey, whoa, I have a job. I have a real life. I'm not moving to East Buttfuck, Virginia." Mary held up her hands.  
  
"The majority of the initial patient base lives in and around Lincoln. Could you staff it in Nebraska?" Langly watched Chaz's face.  
  
"I don't know if I could staff it _at all_." Chaz took a deep breath and tipped his head back, closing his eyes. "But, I like it. Unfortunately, I have no control over whether we're going to get away with it. Everyone who knows anything was trained at Idlewood, and most of the people who are still alive are also still working there. And they're all trained not to talk about it."  
  
"We're not asking them to talk about Idlewood. It's probably better if they never mention it. We're just asking them to advise on some betas and gammas who haven't started killing people, yet. Look, you and Hafs are fine. _I'm_ still okay. So's Allie, for the most part. Delia hasn't killed anybody, right? You know we can build up a population of anomalous people who will never become killers, if we just get to them _early_. And we can't send them to Idlewood -- it's a secret, it's not an outpatient facility, and it's full of exactly the kind of patients we don't want to _scare them_ with."  
  
"I know you're right. I'm not arguing against this being a good idea. It's a _great _idea. I just don't know how the fuck we're going to staff the damn place, and I don't know if I can get the okay to make it happen." Putting his elbows on the table, Chaz leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair, resting the top of his head in his palms. "Okay, new plan. Write me a proposal. We all know Allie's anomalous. Write me a proposal and do it in Fitz's name."  
  
"Fitz knows because his daughter recently converted." Langly nodded. "And he wants to fund a place where she can get proper care. The proposal goes to you, because you're the other gamma he knows, and you obviously work with this kind of thing all the time. And Single Bullet's a pretty big name in charity builds; we've done medical facilities before, so we've got the people to design something that would work. And somewhere we've got the actual philanthropic organisation that makes it harder to tell exactly who's paying for the work. ... Let me make a call and get them started on it, back at the house. We can concentrate on figuring out Granger, and let them take care of putting together the numbers. I'll have them do Virginia _and _Nebraska, just in case. ... It's also going to be easier for all of us to put it in Virginia. The doctors we want are in the area, we've built in Virginia before... It's just that we _need _it _here_."  
  
"Virginia's going to be more believable, too. Virginia or Maryland isn't going to be far for Allie." Chaz sat back up and nodded decisively. "Let's do it. We can start in Virginia, and then worry about something more physically accessible. It's the twenty-first century -- phone calls and video conferences can fill in some of the gaps. Whatever we can do, without alarming the general public, is better than what's available right now. Right now, there's really nothing until you kill someone, and that's what we want to _stop_."  
  
"We're also going to need to give it a good name. Something less utterly fucking creepy than 'the Anomaly'. Something that sounds like a disease, you know?"  
  
Mary bounced an empty can of Dr Pepper off the edge of the trash bin and rocked her chair back to grab another. "Okay, so, weird conditions are usually named for either the first or most famous patient, or the person who wrote the first article about it."  
  
"The first and most famous patients are serial killers." Chaz sighed. "I don't feel so good about putting their names back into the public consciousness."  
  
Langly pushed his glasses up with the back of his wrist. "Didn't Hafs tell me something about being the guinea pig for the first real treatment?"  
  
Chaz still didn't admit to having _designed _that treatment, having taken responsibility for it and for her, but he nodded.  
  
"Gates Disorder," Mary said, not looking quite convinced.  
  
"Gates Metabolic Syndrome," Reid proposed, with a shrug.  
  
"Ooh, that's good." Mary nodded. "I guess we have to ask how she feels about having a weird-ass disorder named after her, though. Not the kind of thing you just want to spring on somebody."  
  
"If it's by Fitz and for Allie, the _facility _should probably be named for them." Reid tapped his finger on the table and then raised it in a decisive gesture. "Call it the Fitzgerald Institute for Metabolic Research. It's cleanly separated from Idlewood -- the name's unrelated, it treats a condition that has an appropriate name and is considered -- at least on paper -- a primarily physical rather than psychological disorder, and the funding clearly comes from a charity that regularly puts money into medical research."  
  
"You've got an eye for this, Dudley Do-Right," Langly teased, the warning implied in his choice of nickname.  
  
"I'm usually coming at the problem from the other side, but it's not that hard to avoid the mistakes that would tip me off, trying to set something up that would be somewhat more difficult to unravel. The only glaring difficulty we're going to run into is that the initial staff are going to be current or former Idlewood employees, and there's no way around that."  
  
"I have no idea what Idlewood looks like from a financial standpoint. I don't know where the tax records point. I don't even know _if_ the tax records point." Chaz shook his head. "But, that's somebody else's problem. I'll throw it on top of the proposal on a sticky note, just to make sure the right people consider that point."  
  
"Okay, I'm gonna make a call." Langly rocked his chair forward and stood up. "You should probably go to bed."  
  
"Still eating," Chaz argued, pointing at the half finished box of ... he realised he wasn't actually sure what it was, beyond the part where that was probably pork. _Probably_. He couldn't wait to get out of the Midwest and back home to _good _Chinese food. Good food in general. Restaurants he knew what to expect from. _His own kitchen_. He wasn't going to think about it. He was just going to put food in his mouth.


	24. Chapter 24

They went to see Jeanine Moore, first, because the library she worked at opened early, and it wasn't likely to be busy for another few hours, providing a window in which one could approach the queen of the reference section, as Langly called her at first glance, in a relatively public place, with few interruptions. But, as the four of them approached the arc of the reference desk, she looked up and her eyes glazed over as she studied them.  
  
"The Angel of the Moon and the Light of Heaven," Moore said, her pale blue eyes oddly unfocused behind massive cat eye glasses with tortoiseshell frames, as she looked over Mary's shoulder at the two agents. She turned her gaze to Langly and smiled. "The Hand of Revelation." Her eyes finally lit on Mary. "And you... the Protector of the Dead, but you're still yet to come, aren't you? Oh, but you will. It's not yet your time."  
  
"Uhhh, excuse me?" Langly blinked at her, back straightening as he took a step back.  
  
"Do you come to me as family, for my role, or for yours?" Moore asked, turning an inquisitive look on Langly, her eyes still far more vacant than her face would suggest.  
  
"As family," Mary ventured. "Your parents called you, I guess?"  
  
Moore shook her head, and her eyes cleared. "Haven't talked to them in a week. Why?"  
  
"We talked to them a couple days ago, asking about a doctor your mother used to see. A lot of the--" Mary fumbled through her pockets until she produced her CDC consultant card. "A lot of the children of this doctor's former patients exhibit a rare metabolic disorder, and--"  
  
Moore smiled and tipped her chin at Langly. "You mean we're like our brother."  
  
"How the _hell _do you know that?" Langly crossed his arms and backed into Reid.  
  
"How do you find the secrets you reveal? How does he reflect desire and expectation?" Moore caught Reid's eye. "The Angel is hiding in your light. You know that, don't you?"  
  
Reid opened his mouth, but Chaz responded before he could put words in order. "Please don't use that word. I may be a little unusual, but I'm just a man."  
  
"You are the embodiment of a legend, an archetype," Moore insisted. "That's why I can see you, why I can know you."  
  
"Just think, less than a year ago, I'd have been invisible," Reid murmured with no small amount of amusement.  
  
"Not invisible, but ... far less than you are. A face in a crowd, maybe, but no..." Moore's eyes turned glassy again. "You were something else, before. You have always been a Light in Darkness, but now you let the reflections shape you." She returned her gaze to Langly. "But, you _are _my brother, aren't you? And she's my sister?"  
  
Mary cleared her throat, awkwardly. "Clones, actually. The tests suggest we're all clones."  
  
"And this is why you're asking about the doctor." Moore nodded, as if none of this were the least bit unusual. "You think he made us all like this. Do you know why?"  
  
Mary shook her head. "By the time we figured it out, he was dead. Or... we _think _he's dead."  
  
"He's gotta be dead." Langly rolled his eyes. "I'm friggin' fifty, and he worked on my mother. Weirdo 'accidents' aside, the guy would be like ninety, if he wasn't dead, and he's sure as hell dead on paper."  
  
Reid said one word. "Helmsman."  
  
"Who wasn't Overlord, so... _no_."  
  
"You're taking this surprisingly well," Chaz observed, entirely shaken to have come face to face with ... probably a long-term beta, barely two days after Delia Novak. The pattern was real, and he was looking at the proof. And just like Delia, she'd pretty much introduced herself with it.  
  
"You're not telling me anything you don't believe, and the some part of the proof is, if you'll excuse me, standing right in front of me. I'd have to be an idiot not to follow where this was going, and idiots generally make poor reference librarians. The question is whether I believe it, and what you intend to do with the information, assuming it turns out to be true -- that there was a doctor who tried to make gods, but got us, instead." Moore rested her elbows on the desk and put her chin on her folded fingers. "So, first step, prove it to me. I'm already inclined to believe, but I will require some incontrovertible proof that you are actually related to me."  
  
Mary pulled a sealed plastic tube out of her pocket. "DNA test work for you? I can take a swab now and have the preliminary results back sometime tomorrow. We're ... we think there are more of us, so I'm trying to catch up with people and get swabs, today, so I can have the results done as fast as possible. I'll be running the preliminary tests, myself, but the samples will be sent to a lab back east for the long runs. It'll still only be a couple of days, probably, for the second-stage comparison. The third stage is entirely above my pay grade, but we've got an actual geneticist who's willing to see if she can figure out why _most _of us are ... uh... neither man nor god."  
  
"Thank you, hello, still human. Yes, _all of us_." Chaz sighed, pockets stretching under the pressure of his hands as he rolled his shoulders and popped his back. "You really can't let people think of us as anything else. That's how purges happen. And we _are _human. Every test we've come up with says so." He looked curiously at her. "And what makes you think Dr Granger was trying to make gods?"  
  
"Because that's arrogant, but forgivable. Most of the immediately apparent alternatives are a great deal less so."  
  
"Counterpoint: He wanted to be Professor X." Mary held up the tube with the swab. "Are you in? We'll tell you what we find out."  
  
"Nobody wants to be Professor X." Moore opened her mouth and pointed, leaning into Mary's reach.  
  
One name passed between Chaz and Reid, and though neither of them said a word, both of them bore the same expression of amused resignation.

* * *

Hugh Stewart was almost as difficult to approach as his father had been, and Chaz absolutely did not want to pull his badge to get past the receptionist. While this was technically an FBI investigation, it wasn't the sort of case he wanted to bring to the attention of too many people who weren't directly involved. For all that people probably _had _been murdered in connection with what had gone on with that clinic, it had happened thirty years in the past, and no one was going to believe they were interviewing Stewart as a _witness_.  
  
But, as they crossed the parking lot, trying to decide who they'd try next, the side door of the building opened and a man unmistakeably Hugh Stewart sauntered toward them, studying them intently. Reid looked like he'd been belted with a large fish, as he took in the man's appearance -- pretty much Langly, but a lot thinner, without glasses, and lot more comfortable in the very nice suit he was wearing.  
  
"Two of you walk like feds, and two of you look like the long lost cousins I don't have. And you're looking for me. Somebody want to tell me what's going on, or are we just going to stand around in the snow until the ice crawls up our legs?"  
  
"I didn't think the receptionist was going to tell you!" Mary pulled out her consultant card again. "Dr Mary Langly, and yes, those are the feds, behind me. We're actually interested in a doctor your mother used to see, but the children of this doctor's patients have a very high rate of a particular rare metabolic disorder, so we're trying to track all of them down and make sure we can put the people who need it in touch with a doctor who understands the condition. The _survivors_, anyway. It's a federal case because of the doctor, not because of the kids. Obviously."  
  
"This is happening to _more people_?" The words were out of Stewart's mouth before he could think twice about them. "And less relevantly, Andrea didn't tell me anything. She never does, which is why I set up an alert for people saying anything that sounds like my name in the lobby. It needs work, but it's good enough that I don't miss too many people I didn't mean to."  
  
"This is happening to a hell of a lot more people." Langly raised a hand and nodded. "Frank Arroway, also one of Granger's kids, also sick with Gates Metabolic Syndrome. Also kind of a fed by proxy." He shrugged eloquently, then pointed at Mary. "She's one of the lucky ones. _She's_ not sick."  
  
Stewart stared at him, studying his face and then eyed Mary. "You're both nearsighted, aren't you?"  
  
Mary nodded. "And you're not, which is--"  
  
"Contacts."  
  
"Son of a bitch, it really _is_ all of us." Langly blinked. He'd been expecting it, but seeing Stewart without glasses had given him pause, as if maybe, just like with the Anomaly, the nearsightedness wasn't consistent.  
  
Stewart nodded slowly. "Okay, this was a good one. Paul's really outdone himself, this time. You really had me going, for a minute."  
  
"Mr Stewart?" This time Chaz's badge came out, and he made no move to adjust his sleeve as he presented it. "We're completely serious."  
  
Mary produced another sealed swab kit. "And if you let us, we can prove it."

* * *

"We should really be catching people at home," Chaz said, not for the first time. "At work, we have to deal with getting past other people whose entire purpose is to prevent us from getting past them. And it's not like we can tell them the _truth_."  
  
Langly shook his head and washed down a mouthful of burger with a swig of cold coffee. "Okay, but, what if we don't go through the front doors like we have official business? Because even if we do have official business, we can't tell anyone that -- you're right about that. But, what the hell am I here for if not to get us into places we shouldn't be?"  
  
"Wait, no, stop." Reid held up a hand as he finished chewing. "Why can't we interview the, ah, _witnesses _at home?"  
  
"Because then we'd only be getting to one of them a day," Mary reminded him. "You really can't go knocking on someone's door after nine, and it's hard to catch someone with a day job before six, so we're stuck with only three hours we can get in. And I have to be here for all of the interviews, because I'm the consulting pathologist -- I'm the one of us whose medical and evidence collection training will stand up in court. I don't know who the hell we'd take to court, because everyone's dead, but if we have to go after a corporation, a trust, somebody's heirs, we need proof that's not just going to be thrown out. And there's no way in hell I'm getting another entire week off, unless I start talking about what's going on. So, like... chop chop, boys. We need to be getting three people a day, or my ass is fired."  
  
"Do you... want me to officially borrow you? I mean, I'll make the call," Chaz offered, kicking himself for not having done it already.  
  
"You are on _vacation_, Villette." Langly rolled his eyes.  
  
"It's not a vacation until there's been at least one of climbing, gliding, or surfing, and I'm not seeing any of those happening in _Nebraska_. Besides, I was only on medical for three days. Now, I'm on a case." A sharp look from Reid reminded Chaz that he'd meant to take another week or two off, to deal with the fallout from Weaver, but he wasn't at his desk, with Brady staring holes in his back, which seemed to be doing wonders for him, already. Or maybe that was just the sleep.  
  
"I am the wrong person to officially bring onto this case, and you know it," Mary pointed at Chaz with a cold french fry. "I don't think you can justify it. You need a geneticist, not a random pathologist."  
  
"Yes, and I have a geneticist. In ..." Chaz looked at Langly. "Maryland?"  
  
"That's where she lives, yeah."  
  
"The point is, I don't know anyone else in the state of Nebraska who has the clearance to work on this and the sense to keep their mouth shut, and I absolutely can argue _that_. You're uniquely qualified, because you've worked on at least one other anomalous crime. I know I can take you into the field, and you're not going to cause problems, unlike any number of other people I might be able to pick from a list of recommended consultants in the area." Chaz pulled the fry out of Mary's grip and stuck it in his mouth. "Besides, this is _your case_. Personally relevant. And while that is exactly why you shouldn't be working on it, it's also exactly why I don't really trust anyone else with it. No one else wants an answer as badly as the two of you."  
  
"The probably seventeen of us, you mean. But, no. None of us are geneticists." Langly shrugged one shoulder and went back to his burger.  
  
"I'd say 'and we'd pay you', but you're already listed as a consultant on our end, so that's happening no matter what we say to your boss."  
  
"There room in the budget for another hotel room? Because like hell am I driving back and forth every damn day, if I don't have to."  
  
"The samples," Reid reminded her.  
  
"Will be fine in the fridge." Mary picked up another fry and made a point of eating it. "So, what's it gonna be?"  
  
Chaz pointed at Langly. "He's paying for the hotel, or we'd be staying in some motor inn on the edge of town."  
  
"The hotel at least _looks _cleaner." Reid, however, looked pained.  
  
"It's not exactly holiday season." Langly tipped his head back and stared into space, setting down the burger. "Lemme see what I can do."  
  
"I should really drive back down in the morning and _see _your boss." Chaz tipped his head and offered a small smile. "I'm _much _more convincing in person."


	25. Chapter 25

They weren't going anywhere, until Chaz got back from York. That was just how that had to be -- Reid wasn't keen on the idea of depending on _Langly _as their primary protection if something went wrong. And that meant it was going to be him, which was also not a good idea. Irate gammas were what Chaz had been dealing with for his entire career, and if they were going to show up on some potential supervillain's doorstep with weird news and ask for DNA samples, the least violent way out of that, if things didn't go according to plan, was just letting Chaz talk them out of it.  
  
"He's oddly believable," Reid had told Mary.  
  
"I have to respect the guy. He could've made it big as a con man. Instead, he's a fibbie." Langly had stopped to think for a moment, then. "I'm not sure if that's 'respect' or 'pity', all of a sudden. Still, backbone of steel, when he can get out of bed."  
  
But, now, they were just ... still waiting. Reid knew enough to say that Chaz had been successful and was on his way back, but without a phone call, he wasn't going to say that in front of Mary. There was no sense in reminding her that was among Chaz's talents.  
  
"Remind me why we have to wait for Special Agent Sulkface?" Mary tipped her chair back and grabbed a Dr Pepper, keeping her cards close to her chest, because one or the other of them was cheating and she was sure of it.  
  
"Because he took the car?" Langly rolled his eyes.  
  
"My car is parked right outside. He took _your _car."  
  
"Because it's his case." Reid tossed another two Fritos into the middle of the table, decently sure Langly actually had a better hand than he did, but that Mary did not.  
  
"You're just lucky I'm between projects," Mary huffed, looking at her cards again, trying to figure out whether it was even worth trying to win this hand.

* * *

"You look like you're gonna hurl," Mary said to her cousin, inching further from him on the back seat. "At least roll down the window. You're in the back. It's not like it's going to come back in."  
  
Chaz made a muffled sound of amusement, lips held in his teeth as he declined to comment on the situation behind him. Finally, as Langly grumbled and shifted, jamming his back into the corner between the door and the seat, Chaz picked up the cup that had held his last coffee. "If you're gonna spew --"  
  
"Don't do it, Villette. Do not finish that sentence."  
  
Reid twisted around in his seat to catch the full force of a glare not even intended for him, but below Chaz's line of sight, in the mirror. "Do you want to sit this one out?"  
  
"_No_." Langly still looked like he was going to return the entire bag of Fritos he'd eaten before they left the hotel.  
  
"I _said _don't eat the Fritos." Mary rolled her eyes. "You're fucking _fifty_, Dick. You can't be doing shit like that."  
  
"I can eat three boxes of Twinkies in a row and wash them down with Jolt. I can eat Frohike's salsa. Why would I be worried about _a bag of Fritos_?"  
  
"Have you seen what those'll do to your insides?" Mary made a face.  
  
"_You've_ only seen what they'll do to a corpse." Langly leaned forward and put his head between his knees. "_Don't share._"  
  
"You know what it reminds me of? There's that story about King John and the ale and the bushel of ... peaches, I think?"  
  
"Peaches," Reid confirmed. "And it's extremely unlikely to be true. Pigeons, maybe, but not a person."  
  
"Because pigeons don't burp or fart." Mary nodded, and Chaz could see the gleam in her eye. "Still, the guy died with stomach pains, and it's long been thought an intestinal rupture killed him. Probably bleeding, rather than sepsis, with how fast it--"  
  
Langly lunged across her, batting at the window controls, having judged it easier than trying to turn around. But, the automatic window moved at a snail's pace compared to the old hand-crank windows that he suddenly missed. And the GPS was on, but it wasn't linked to any of the systems he needed to grab to make the window move faster. There was no way he was going to get his head through it fast enough, but maybe...

* * *

The car was sparkling clean, when they pulled up outside Leda Johnstone's building, Chaz having elected to take a detour through the nearest car wash, to avoid arriving for an interview with the remains of Langly's lunch splashed down the back quarter of the car. At least he'd managed to get it all _out_ of the car. But, Mary had been right, and Langly was looking much better. Probably well enough to make it through the interview without any... dramatic incidents.  
  
"So, we're pretty sure she's like me, right?" Mary asked on the stairs. "So, we're relatively safe? I don't have to worry about anybody getting fried by an exploding lamp or having their brains scrambled?"  
  
Chaz shrugged. "Probably? Remember the last time she lived at home was at least a decade ago. Things may have changed, since the last time her parents had a clear idea of what was going on. But, the others started showing signs much earlier, so there's a much lower chance we're walking into something dangerous."  
  
"Good enough, I guess." Mary glanced down the office-carpeted hall at a seemingly endless line of blue doors and shook her head before knocking. Dismal place, really, and she was glad she wasn't living in anything like it, any more.  
  
When the door opened, she held up her consultant card as she started to introduce herself, but the woman on the other side of the door cut her off.  
  
"CDC?" There was a moment of confusion and then the woman's face twisted in rage. "I'm going to kill him."  
  
It took Mary a moment to follow that line of thought, but then she choked back a laugh. "Not unless you mean your mother's obstetrician, and as far as we can tell, he's already dead."  
  
The woman blinked. "What? What's that got to do with me?"  
  
"A lot, actually, if you're Leda Johnstone." When Mary got a nod, she went on. "We've been tracking down the children of this doctor's former patients, because there's an unusually high rate of a particular mutation, a _really rare_ metabolic disorder, that came out of his clinic. We just want to make sure you guys are safe, and to put you in touch with a team of specialists that can help, if you do have it. Unfortunately, with how long it's been before this came to light, we're really just trying to find the _survivors_, at this point."  
  
"Are you serious?" Leda took in the faces on her doorstep. "You can't be serious. I'm thirty-three. Why would this be happening _now_?"  
  
Langly shrugged. "Hey, I'm fifty, and I just started showing signs last year. The doc, here, and I were also Dr Granger's work. I've got it, and she doesn't."  
  
Chaz offered his badge, over Mary's shoulder. "Dr Langly's entirely serious. We believe that Granger was involved in criminal acts of human experimentation that may have involved your family, and now that it's come to light, we're just trying to do what we can to resolve the problems he caused and to attempt to figure out how and why he caused this disorder and whether there's a cure. But, as Dr Langly mentioned, there are definitely treatments that will help, if you're one of the affected children."  
  
"Just to reassure you, we're pretty sure he didn't harm any of the involved parents, and we know for certain that he lied to them about what he was doing. But, eighty-one percent of the children, so far, are affected by this disorder that only affects about two percent of the larger population. Like I said, it's ... this isn't a minor statistical discrepancy." Mary offered a pained look and an apologetic shrug. "But, if you'll let us, we'd like to get a cheek swab and ask you a few questions, to see if you're one of the affected individuals, but I'll tell you, at a glance, you look like you might be one of the lucky ones, like me."  
  
"This is really fucked up. This is... just... _really fucked up_." Leda looked them over again. "Look, do you want to stand in the hall for a minute while I call somebody? This is weird enough that I'm not really just going to let you in my house without telling somebody what's up."  
  
"If you want us to come back another day, or maybe to meet us at your parents' house, we're comfortable with that," Chaz offered, putting his badge back in his pocket. "In fact, I'd suggest calling your parents. We've already spoken with them, earlier in the week, and you can get their impressions of us."  
  
"We just don't like to scare the hell out of people over the phone, you know?" Langly shrugged again. "Better to show up so you can see the badges."  
  
"I don't think I know who the two of you are, yet." Leda looked at Langly and Reid beside him.  
  
"Frank Arroway, FBI technical consultant, and that's--" Langly pointed and Reid cut him off.  
  
"SSA Dr Spencer Reid, with the Behavioural Analysis Unit."  
  
"Behavioural Analysis? They sent a _shrink_?" Leda gaped. "What the hell kind of disease is this?"  
  
"No, he does criminal profiling." Chaz shook his head. "He's here to interpret anything we learn about Dr Granger. Me, I'm with Anomalous Crimes, because if there's anything this isn't, it's normal."  
  
"Yeah, he's the 'Things That Make You Go Hmm' division," Mary agreed, nodding. "Give the lady a card, Chaz, and let her get back to dinner. We'll give you a call tomorrow, and you can let us know what you want to do."  
  
Leda looked them over again, as she took the card Chaz offered her. "Look, let me call my parents, and I'll meet you somewhere public. You're right, I haven't had dinner, so ... how about I meet you at Super Taco, in an hour?"  
  
Mary gave her a thumbs up. "Give Agent Villette a call if you change your mind." She stepped back, gesturing toward the stairs. "Gentlemen, there are tacos in our future."


	26. Chapter 26

Byers answered his phone as soon as it rang, expecting it would be Langly. "No, we haven't burned the house down, and the floor is fine. The plumbing on the other hand..."  
  
"Should I call you back, later?" an unexpected but welcome voice asked, and Byers sat up straighter, shooting a quick look around the kitchen.  
  
"Wha-- Ah, no! No, of course not!" He stood up a little too casually, not looking directly at any of the contractors currently replacing half the pipes in the house as he sauntered toward the hall. He could shut himself in the laundry room for a few minutes -- that had worked for Agent Villette! Except there were plumbers in the laundry room. Of course there were. Maybe the front room, then, with its uncomfortable chairs. "Everything's fine, here! I have a few minutes!"  
  
Frohike gave him the single most unimpressed look as he leaned into the living room and gestured back toward the kitchen. He returned the innocent look that never worked on Frohike.  
  
"You're halfway across the country, and I can still tell when you're lying. You're really bad at it. You know that, right?"  
  
"What!?" Byers twisted out of the way of a guy carrying several lengths of pipe, as he made his way down the hall. "What would I even be lying about? We're just having some pipes replaced!"  
  
"In Frank's family home. Has he started yelling, yet?"  
  
Byers pulled the door of the front room closed behind him and dropped into one of the terrible chairs. "He's not here. He knew better. He told us to hire some contractors to take care of some things, like the plumbing, and then ran off to see about the rest of the, ah... twins? I think he's just dragging it out so he won't be back until the pipes are done."  
  
There was a long pause. "Reid's influence. Definitely Reid's influence. He's deadly with the tactical procrastination."  
  
"So I've heard. Loudly."  
  
"Oh! God! What!? No! Don't _tell me that_! No, no, no, no, no. Okay, so, I actually called to tell you I miss you, but I'm not going to talk about that until I get this image out of my head that is... not something I ever needed to think about. So, how are things going with the case, out there? I know better than to ask too much, but..."  
  
"They're definitely real. Those are actually clones of, well, _Langly_. We haven't found any older, and I'd be incredibly surprised if we did, but ... Dr Langly's run the first tests on a few of them and sent the samples on to Dr Alfarsi for verification and further testing that I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be talking about, but suffice to say she's looking for the differences, because they _look _identical, but we don't think they actually are. There are some, ah, subtle differences between earlier clones and later clones."  
  
"And you can tell the difference, because you know the original?"  
  
"I've never gotten that close to--" Byers squeezed his eyes shut, sighing. "No, that's a lie. I _have _gotten that close, but you really need a test to tell." He took a deep breath. "Penny... I should tell you this. I have to tell you this, but now is really not the time. It's not the kind of thing I should be saying over the phone. You should be able to-- I should be there in person."  
  
"If you're going to tell me you've seen Reid naked, I'm going to stop you right there. I do not need to know. He's not going to tell me, and you shouldn't either."  
  
"Ah, no. No, I'm... No, and I _haven't_. And I don't really want to, no matter what Frank says about the experience, which I'm pretty sure he does just to get on my nerves." Byers groaned and pressed his free hand over his eyes. "I said I wasn't talking about this right now, but Dr Reid is absolutely correct, and you do need to know--"  
  
"Herpes?"  
  
Byers felt his spine stiffen, and his mouth dropped open as he sputtered and choked, trying to find words. "What!? No! No, not a disease. Definitely nothing contagious. My god, no, _that _you'd already know. I promise. I just... may have done something I'm not proud of. Not... entirely comfortable with, really, and it was, before you say anything, entirely my idea. In my defence, I was drunk, at the time."  
  
It wasn't quite true. He'd had a few drinks earlier in the evening, but he was stone sober when he'd made that decision. And then Langly had gotten up and gotten completely wasted. And he still wasn't sure how he felt about that, but he was pretty sure the answer to that question was supposed to be 'bad'.  
  
"Sweetie, you did something dumb. I'm sure it can wait. You're okay, right? I don't have to fly out there and bring you a fruit basket, do I?"  
  
"I'm ... I'm okay. Nothing's broken. It happened months ago, and I just... it hasn't been the right time, and it's really something I should have--"  
  
"Months. It's not going to change anything, if you wait a little longer. You'll be home, soon, and we'll go out for dinner, and then you can tell me. Or maybe we should go out for a drink. It sounds like that kind of thing."  
  
"The thing is, if I don't tell you, Dr Reid promised he _would_."  
  
"Can I just say it's adorable you still call him 'doctor'?"  
  
"He earned it." Byers shook his head. "That's not the point--"  
  
"It is none of his damn business, and if he tries to tell me, so help me, I will stick my fingers in my ears and tell him so, until he goes away, and if that doesn't work, I will threaten him with David Hasselhoff pinups as the wallpaper on every electronic device he has to use for work."  
  
The words rushed out, before he could stop them. "I slept with La-- er. Hrm." Byers cleared his throat. "Frank. I slept with Frank."  
  
A baffled pause followed. "_When?_"  
  
"After we found out I was married, and before we decided what to do about it. It was right after I stopped being married, really. A couple hours later. It just... I wasn't taking it well, and I had a few drinks, and it just... seemed like the thing to do at the time. I was drunk, and the woman I'd spent thirty years in love with just left me for another man, after I finally found her again. I just... I wanted to be wanted, and I was pretty sure Frank would do it. He got very drunk first. Intentionally. I just didn't want to call you up and be completely pathetic. Not when I didn't know if we -- if there even was an 'us' to speak of."  
  
"Honey? I don't think we were dating, yet. I don't think I get to have an opinion about that. If anyone gets to have an opinion about that, it's _Reid_. I _know_ they were together by then. It's public record."  
  
"He's not just okay with it, he _saw it coming_. He knew before I did."  
  
"That's what happens when you start hanging around with profilers. He _knows better_, though. On the other hand, he probably knew before they were dating, so I can't really blame him as much as I'd like to. You don't profile your friends and family. It's bad for the relationship."  
  
"So... So, we're okay?"  
  
"Fitz, sweetie, we're fine. Just don't ever tell me about the details, and we're _great_!"

* * *

"Things I didn't miss about being a journalist: living out of a hotel." Langly groaned and got up from his chair, leaving his laptop open on the table as he threw himself across the bed he'd theoretically been sharing with Reid. In practice, they'd more often ended up in the other bed, with Chaz. "I just want to go home. My back is killing me, these chairs are crap, and this room still absolutely reeks of hotel. Which is better than smelling of _motel_, but it's still pretty rank."  
  
"It's the carpet cleaner," Reid said, distractedly, still paging through the latest results. "Mary's coming back with the last of the preliminary results, tonight. From what we've seen, I don't think we'll be losing anyone. Every single one of them matches either you or Mary in the preliminaries, so far, and we both know there's not a lot of difference between the two of you. Not... genetically, anyway."  
  
"I was gonna say... C'mere and kneel on my back a minute, and I'll show you the difference between us," Langly muttered, face pressed against the bed and one hand pressed against his lower back. He groaned again, loudly. "No, really, come kneel on my back."  
  
Reid finally looked up, twisting around in his chair to look at Langly. "What did you _do_?"  
  
"I sat in that chair too long. I don't know how you can stand it."  
  
"I _am_ younger than you."  
  
"You've also been shot in the back in the last three months."  
  
"Upper back. Different muscles." Reid stretched his neck, as he got up, tipping his head one way and then the other. "The chairs are pretty terrible, though."  
  
"They're ugly and they suck to sit in, and I'm paying what for this room?" Langly complained.  
  
"You picked the hotel," Reid reminded him, kneeling over Langly's thighs and tugging at the hand still pressed against his back. "Here, let me see?"  
  
Langly moved his hand and Reid ran his thumbs down either side of Langly's spine.  
  
"You were good at this, when we met, and now you're better at it, and I can't tell if that's just because you know me, or--"  
  
"Chaz, actually," Reid confessed. "Chaz is much better at it, but mostly upper back, for what I hope are obvious reasons."  
  
"Because he's been working on you," Langly muttered, still tense.  
  
"No, it's why I let him anywhere near my back after I got shot. He picked up a few things in physical therapy. I don't think he could help it, at the time."  
  
"Physical therapy for wha-- Oh." Langly pulled his glasses off and tossed them toward the nightstand, hearing them hit the floor, instead. "Dammit. Yeah, that'd give him perspective."  
  
Reid shifted his hand and his weight, getting a dull thump from Langly's spine. Under him, Langly made a choked sound of surprise.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
"Oh, my god, I'm amazing. I can feel my left foot again." The next sound could have, if one were so inclined, be described as a purr. "Did I tell you I love you, today? Because I love you."  
  
"You love not being in pain," Reid argued, his hands gently caressing Langly's back. "Not that I can fault that in any way! That is generally the case, in a majority of people!"  
  
"You hate people," Langly reminded him.  
  
"I don't hate people. That requires more effort than I'm willing to expend. I just don't _like _people. But, I do agree with the majority of them that pain is unpleasant and I'd prefer not to experience it."  
  
"Villette," Langly muttered against his arm, and it sounded like an accusation.  
  
"That's not pain, it's control. Which is exactly why I struggle with it."  
  
"No, I meant he just parked. I caught him on the camera. Dinner in a few minutes, which means I should get up. But, I don't want to get up." Langly seemed to sink further into the mattress.  
  
Reid folded himself down along Langly's back, knees still bent as he crossed his arms over the back of Langly's shoulders and put his head down. "So don't. You really do need to eat, though."  
  
"Mmm. Wake me up in an hour."  
  
Reid yawned. "Set the alarm on your phone."  
  
By the time Chaz got back into the room, his hands full of bags of takeout, Langly was fast asleep and Reid looked about halfway there.  
  
"Eat something and come to bed," Reid invited, not even opening his eyes. "Mary'll be back in a few hours, and we're not going to have any new information until then."  
  
"You haven't been sleeping, because of me," Chaz realised, as he unpacked dinner onto the parts of the table that weren't covered in piles of paper.  
  
"I'm fine," Reid insisted. "And I think you're okay enough to get through a couple of hours without my help. You need it. I need it. He's already asleep."  
  
"Shut. Up," Langly muttered, as he drifted in and out of sleep at the sound of voices.  
  
"Come to bed," Reid said, again, curling up closer against Langly's back as he opened his mind to Chaz, clinging just to the edge of consciousness to finish this argument.  
  
"I'm going to end up on the floor," Chaz reminded him, even as he took off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. Maybe he wouldn't wake up on the floor this time. Maybe he could go three hours without a nightmare. They looked oddly comfortable, and he knew he wouldn't fit into the pile, but he could curl up next to them.  
  
After another moment's consideration of the angles involved, Chaz grabbed the blanket from the other bed and draped it over all of them, as he curled up in the oddly-shaped space between Langly and the corner of the bed. The case had waited thirty years. It would wait another few hours. And dinner could always be microwaved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow chapters, because something something sleeping twelve hours a day because medical bullshit. As soon as I get February sorted out in the Things People Pay Me To Do, chapters should get a little more regular, again.


	27. Chapter 27

Langly looked around the table in the library's meeting room, looking just as stunned as everyone else there. He'd gotten used to Mary, but now there were four more of her, five more of himself. And he made a note never to cut his hair like Jason Campbell had. Of course, cutting his hair wasn't really on his list of things to do, but Campbell just looked completely stupid.  
  
Only Leda Johnstone stood out from the rest, and not by much. Maybe ten or fifteen pounds between her and Jeanine Moore, a softer cast to her face. She was actually pretty, as opposed to the rest of them, no matter _what _Reid had to say about it. He was still convinced Reid needed to wear his glasses more often and maybe stop staying up until he hallucinated. At least Villette was usually looking at his _legs_, and he _did _have pretty great legs. They all did, he realised, as he looked around the table again.  
  
"So, let me be the first to say what we're all thinking: What the _fuck_?" Auria Varga slammed her hands on the table as she leaned forward, gold-framed glasses sliding down her nose.  
  
"There are seventeen of us, I think, still living in the state of Nebraska," Mary started, holding up a hand to calm any early protests. "Nine of you live in Lincoln, where you were born."  
  
"Sixteen," Langly corrected. "I'm living in DC. I'm just here on this case. But, she's right. We started in Lincoln because most of you live in Lincoln."  
  
"Out of the eleven of us in this room, nine suffer from Gates Metabolic Disorder, at a glance. I'm pretty sure Leda and I are the only ones who don't," Mary went on. "For a disorder that affects less than two percent of the population, those numbers are a little ridiculous. As we explained to each of you, there's a clinic opening in Virginia, shortly, staffed by some of the researchers who have been working on defining and treating the condition. Agent Villette, here, is an example of what happens when you do stupid shit and don't follow the directions."  
  
Chaz leaned back against the wall and raised one hand in a jaunty wave. An awkward smile stretched his lips. "Don't be me, folks!"  
  
"I've heard his sister is considered one of the successes, though. She had a rather advanced case, and is now living a relatively normal life." Mary looked around the table. "But, what we're trying to figure out is how and why so many of us have the condition, and whether it was Dr Granger's intention to produce that result."  
  
"He wanted gods. He got us," Jeanine Moore volunteered.  
  
"What the hell is the crazy cat lady talking about?" Loren Evans demanded, rolling his eyes.  
  
"Is she crazy, Loren? Is she really?" Delia Novak shot him a warning look. "Because I'm not so sure she is."  
  
"_Gods?_" Evans scoffed. "We're sick. The evidence suggests there were more of us, but they _died_."  
  
"We're not gods." Chaz sighed. "We're just people. We're just ... really weird people science is still trying to figure out what to do with. Mutants, maybe, but not gods."  
  
Jack Lakeland leaned forward, elbows on the table, his hands looking like they belonged to a man twice his size. His cheekbones were sharp enough to cast shadows. "Mutants like the fucking X-Men. I didn't ask for this shit. Nobody _wants_ to be what we are."  
  
"What the fuck are you all talking about?" Evans demanded, looking around the room.  
  
"Let me guess..." Chaz stepped away from the wall. "Something horrible happened to you, recently, and you've been losing weight, ever since, right? Something that probably would have killed you or seriously screwed you up, but you got lucky, somehow."  
  
"Yeah, but you know that. We talked about that." Evans peered at him suspiciously.  
  
"It happened to most of them sooner. Lakeland was born like that, and so was I. It's why we weigh less than all of the rest of you."  
  
Langly rolled his eyes. "And because you do stupid shit, Villette. Come on, you know better."  
  
"You don't get to talk until you stop living entirely on Twinkies and Jolt," Chaz shot back, before turning back to Evans. "You may not have advanced enough to be getting... let's call them tertiary effects. Primary effect is your metabolism has kicked into hyperdrive, and you can't stop eating. Secondary effects are... subtle. You've got an increased awareness of certain kinds of information -- like Jeanine has. Tertiary effects are when you get into things like Jack, Frank, Delia, and I can do, and they don't eliminate the secondary effects. Most often, you have an awareness of a certain kind of information and you can ... _do things_ with it. In other cases, most often those where a secondary _massive _trauma precedes the tertiary stage, you'll get people whose tertiary skills have nothing to do with their secondary awareness. And then there's the quaternary effects, and those are the ones we worry about. These are the psychological effects of the sudden changes in the body. Frequently they include delusions of grandeur, narcissism, and a nearly irresistible desire to harm others."  
  
Evans cleared his throat and cocked his head at Moore.  
  
Langly shook his head. "Moore thinks gods are what Granger wanted, but he got us _instead_. So, no, what she said is we're _not_ gods."  
  
"The clinic, like I said, isn't open yet, but there's a research facility, and you'd be talking to the same people either way, so if you start showing quaternary effects, please call the number on the card I'm passing around." Chaz produced a business card from somewhere no one would later be able to agree on and handed it to Mike Davis. "Like Dr Langly said, they helped my sister, and they can probably help you, if you catch it before it becomes full-blown delusions. As long as you still have an awareness of yourself and what's real, however tenuous, we can get you back. I've seen the treatment work."  
  
"Not to be that asshole," Davis said, passing the card to Johnstone, "but I think this is the part where someone has to say something about government mind control."  
  
"Lemme be the first to say you're not wrong." Langly folded his arms and tipped his head. "But, like... it's the only game in town. It's not like you have a hell of a lot of options, right now. The choice is pretty much freak out and become a serial killer -- yeah, that's ... statistically likely for us. All of the early cases of Gates Disorder that we _know about_ were serial killers. I've met some. So, you can either freak out and become a serial killer or you can get treatment from a classified research facility, if you start having problems. The clinic's going to be privately funded though. The guy behind it has a daughter who's sick like us, and he wants to make sure she, _and the rest of us_, don't either die or turn into serial killers. Gotta love a philanthropist with a personal interest."  
  
"It's disease research," Varga pointed out, putting the number into her phone. "Why is it classified? Wouldn't it help more people if everyone knew?"  
  
"The problem is the tertiary and quaternary effects," Chaz explained, tossing a protein bar down the table to Lakeland. "Historically, people have reacted to certain kinds of public health hazard -- I'm going to point to AIDS and leprosy, here -- with significant amounts of violence. While we're not technically talking about a communicable disease, in this case -- at least not in the traditional understanding of 'communicable' -- we are talking about something that can cause people to have inexplicable talents or to become killers. The predicted response, at this point, is a purge of anorexics and other people with low body weight. People claiming the murders were self-defence, because they were afraid their neighbour or co-worker was actually a killer, because they were unusually thin. It's the evolution of the 'gay panic' defence. So, right now, we're trying to keep the disease under wraps, until we can demonstrate a stable population of people who are handling themselves and the treatments fairly well. We want to be in a position where we can say it's a rare side effect, if the condition is left untreated, and that most people who have it are just thin and smart. We need to make a statistically significant percentage of us look mostly harmless -- pitiable, rather than dangerous -- before we start more widespread public outreach. Right now, you -- Granger's children -- are the largest single group of affected people I've ever laid eyes on. So, you guys are kind of going to be the poster children for that outreach, when it happens. And... probably me, to be fair. Lakeland and I are a whole other kind of success story."  
  
"So, what the hell am I doing here?" Johnstone asked. "You said I'm probably not sick."  
  
"Yet," Moore reminded her. "You're not sick yet."  
  
"Like me." Mary nodded. "We're all carriers, at least, because we're all almost genetically identical. Yes, _all of us_. That's the 'almost'." She pointed to Langly. "So far, he and I are the most different, which is saying a hell of a lot, since we read as identical twins, aside from the part where he's packing a Swedish sausage. But, there's some more subtle differences in parts of the genome that I _don't_ know how to read. I'm a forensic pathologist, heavy on the pathology, but we've got a geneticist on the team -- a Dr Jasmine Alfarsi, back in Maryland, and she's doing some extended testing, trying to figure out what the hell Granger was actually messing with. Which means for right now, you and I are the ones who just don't have it yet, but it could happen at any time. Frank was _fifty _before it caught up with him."  
  
"Frank was fifty when the tertiary effects showed up," Chaz corrected. "Which is when he finally noticed something was _wrong_."  
  
"Okay, so... what... are the tertiary effects?" Jason Campbell asked. "You've been talking about gods and unusual talents, but I haven't really seen any--"  
  
Langly held up a hand. He took his phone out of his pocket, plugged it in to the wall, and put it on the table. With his eyes closed, he put his hands on his head, and a moment later, one of the fluorescent tubes in the fixture over the table exploded. "Telephony and wired networks, mostly. But, if I can pick up a signal, I can find the device. If I can find the device, I can find the power source. If I can find the power source, I can find everything else plugged into it, locally. _That _is a tertiary effect. My secondary was probably being able to do encryption algorithms off the top of my head. I've been doing ... network security for, god, like thirty-five years."  
  
A small smile crossed Hugh Stewart's face. "You remember when I said I wrote something to pick up my name being said in the lobby?"  
  
"Yeah, I had a feeling about that." Langly laughed. "You're reading the security feeds, right?"  
  
Stewart nodded, still smiling.  
  
"Just reading them could go either way. That's either a secondary or a low-grade tertiary." Chaz tipped his head back and forth. "Can you stop doing it?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. No, I only do it when I'm in the office. I don't even know if it works anywhere else."  
  
Reid raised his eyebrows at Moore, who smiled at him, knowingly.  
  
"I see the legends that define people. I see how they see themselves." She pointed at Langly and then at Stewart. "He's the revealer of poisonous secrets. You've got wires in the eyes in the back of your head."  
  
"And what about me?" Lakeland asked her, knowing damned well they'd never met before, and nothing he'd said would let her guess.  
  
"Poseidon. Moses. He for whom the sea parts."  
  
Lakeland looked ill. "I almost drowned," he admitted, after a moment. "I always understood water. I could model it without even thinking. It was simple, predictable, but that didn't mean I knew how to get out of it, if someone else put me there. I thought I was going to die, and then it all moved out of my way, and I walked out. Turns out I can move other liquids, too, which is great at work. I get calls in the middle of the ni -- well, afternoon, really -- because the press is fucked up and nobody else wants to touch it or to pay for a maintenance call. Everybody knows I'm the guy you call if it's a wet problem that won't fix, and nobody ever asks why it just works for me." With a tired sigh, he cracked open a folding cup and gestured at the coffee urn on the far end of the room.  
  
Langly stepped out of the way of the sudden arc of coffee that shot from the side of the tap, landing perfectly in Lakeland's cup.  
  
"I wouldn't have hit you."  
  
"He wouldn't have," Chaz agreed, pointing at himself as he looked at Lakeland. "Stats and physics, for a secondary. I jump off tall things for fun."  
  
Lakeland grinned. "But, do you surf?"  
  
"More than a desert rat has any right to. Why, you want to make some waves?"  
  
Lakeland stretched his arms out and cracked his knuckles, the grin turning cocky enough that Langly recognised himself in it. "Maybe."  
  
Moore looked at Novak, for a long moment. "Oh..."  
  
"Fuck off," Novak snapped, eyes flashing behind her glasses. "Whatever you think you know, you're wrong."  
  
"I can see in the dark," Campbell volunteered, drawing attention away from Novak. "Not just dim light, no light. Colour, text, doesn't matter. Bugs the shit out of my optometrist."  
  
"But, the glasses suggest you're still nearsighted, like the rest of us," Stewart observed.  
  
"Well, all of us except _you_, obviously." Campbell gestured at Stewart.  
  
"Contacts." Stewart shrugged.  
  
Mike Davis scoffed, the tattoos on his arm rippling as he rubbed his face and re-settled his glasses. "There's a secondary effect I want: being able to see like a normal person."  
  
"So, what's your superpower?" Lakeland asked him.  
  
"Less of a superpower and more of a pain in the ass. I can hear _everything_." Davis pointed at Lakeland. "Your stomach's still growling. Somebody's trying to xerox most of a textbook, at a guess, because that copier in the reference section's been running non-stop for the last ten minutes. It sounds like someone's trying to bathe in the sink, in the family bathroom -- the echoes are too small for it to be either of the other ones. The checkout desk has a counter that clicks every time someone comes in the front doors. _Everything_. It's fucking awful."  
  
Chaz tossed Lakeland another protein bar. "I'd have had this meeting in a restaurant, but I didn't think we should be having too much of this conversation in public, despite wanting to put the meeting in a relatively public place. And, unfortunately, we're not supposed to bring food in here."  
  
"But, of course, you did anyway," Lakeland said around a mouthful of chocolate-covered whatever the hell that was. Not peanut butter. He was sure of that much.  
  
"Hey, I've been doing this for almost as long as you. I'm surprised you're not carrying."  
  
"Left it in the car. I figured I'd make it through meeting my ... what are you guys, siblings? without looking like a garbage disposal. But, you know what that looks like, don't you."  
  
Chaz nodded. "Yeah, it's... I owe you dinner, for the effort."  
  
"You really think you can afford dinner for both of us?"  
  
"Hey, my sister's not on this case. I've got a gap in the budget the size of one of us."  
  
"The silkworm. The weaver. But, you're not quite there..." Moore looked curiously at Varga, who smiled.  
  
"I write society and fashion for the paper. And yeah, I can tell what cloth is by touching it. It's not that inexplicable, I'm just really good at it. There's a pool going at the office for how long it's going to take someone to fool me, and I'd hate to break it to them the answer's never." Varga rolled her eyes and shook her head.  
  
"Varga from the society pages?" Lakeland groaned and tugged out his hair tie, pulling his ponytail back again. "I had to fix the seps on that photo from the charity auction last week. Did you guys get somebody new doing prepress, over there?"  
  
"Oh, god, I'm gonna throw Dan down the stairs. He was Glazer's intern, last year, and for some reason they're actually paying him, now." Varga took her glasses off and rubbed them on her shirt. "Why they gave the new guy the majority of the four-colour work..."  
  
"And you think somebody made us like this _on purpose_?" Evans asked Mary, as Lakeland and Varga kept chatting about the paper.  
  
"Yeah, we're really pretty sure of that. The whole clone thing really drives the point home." Mary nodded and sat on the edge of the table. "Somebody definitely made us on purpose, and I'm guessing that most of what we are is intentional. Still not sure why the hell anyone would want to make us nearsighted, unless it's part of something else that I'm not good enough to see. But, that's why we've got Dr Alfarsi. She hasn't figured it out yet, either, but there's some editing in places we don't know much about, because they don't control stuff anyone's studying. And that's differences _between us_, so it's not the disease. The packets I passed out at the beginning have the full results for each of you and the comparison tables, so you can look at the stuff yourselves. I know none of us are geneticists, but I also know some of you do numbers and patterns, so maybe you'll see something we missed."  
  
"Don't look at me." Evans shrugged, looking at Mary over the top of his glasses. "If I have one of these talents, it's spatial relations. I only have to see something once to know how big it is and where it'll fit."  
  
Langly snorted and cleared his throat, and Evans gave him a long sidelong look.  
  
"If it doesn't fit, you're doing it wrong."  
  
Moore and Novak cackled, and Chaz thought it intensified their resemblance to Mary. Usually, laughing made family members look less alike, but with the clones, it only enhanced the effect.  
  
"So, what are we supposed to do with this, now that we know?" Campbell asked, only one of his eyes focusing around the thumbprint on his glasses.  
  
Chaz rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets, a contemplative look on his face. He started talking when his toes touched the ground. "Hopefully, you get some help managing the condition, before it gets worse for you. That's the most important thing. Less important to you, maybe, but the whole reason we're here, we'd like you to help us find the people who did this to you."  
  
"I thought you said Granger was dead."  
  
Reid finally spoke. "He is, as far as we know, but a project like that was very likely sponsored by a larger group, and without the clinic's records, it's very difficult for us to see who was paying for it. The equipment, alone, would've required a budget larger than the average urgent care has starting out, and in the nineteen-sixties, that equipment would have been even more expensive and probably partially constructed in-house. Granger is the last person in the chain. We're trying to find the higher levels, so we can see if they're still doing this, somewhere else."  
  
"Oh my god, are you serious?" Johnstone looked stunned. "There's a chance this didn't stop when Granger died?"  
  
"Depends on whether the guys with the money liked the end result." Langly shrugged. "And Stewart and I were the only ones old enough to really judge when the place shut down. Even Varga was only, like, what, twelve?"  
  
Davis looked around the table. "Wait a minute, this place was working since the sixties, and of the eleven of us in the room, you're telling me that by the end of the eighties, only two of us were adults?"  
  
"And barely. Actually, maybe only me. It was the _late _sixties, but yeah, seven of you were born in the eighties, three in the seventies, and if we add in the other six scattered across Nebraska, the numbers don't get much better." Langly's eyebrow drifted up as he looked around the table. "We're not sure if this is a sign the birth rate went up or the _survival _rate went up. We only have access to survivors, and no records. I mean, it might be both, but..."  
  
"The warnings," Novak said, quietly, leaning forward to put her face in her hands, fingers under her glasses. "Dr Granger warned my mother that they might have to try again, that I might be born sick, like Jack, but... How old are you, Jack?"  
  
"Thirty-eight. I'll be thirty-nine in a few months."  
  
"You're younger than I am, which means you're not the first to be born with it, and he _knew_. And he kept doing it, anyway." Novak took a deep breath. "What do you need from us? I'm in."  
  
Lakeland nodded. "Same. I'm not supposed to be the lucky one." He gestured at himself and looked at Chaz. "_You _know. This isn't right."  
  
"But, it is who we are. Nothing's going to change that, unfortunately. Not in _our _lifetime." Chaz couldn't get the bleak look out of his eyes. "And it's not guaranteed to pass to our children, but it's statistically more likely that the children of people with tertiary effects will be born like us. My, ah... My father had it. So, something to think about. I made my decision."  
  
Lakeland looked sick.  
  
Chaz nodded. "That's the face I made."  
  
"I'm sterile," Langly cut in, and then pointed at Mary. "She's not. Somewhere, something changed."  
  
"Actually, none of us after nineteen-eighty are," Mary said, tapping the pile of paper in front of her. "At least not _genetically_. Lakeland's the first."  
  
"Wait, if I get sick, my _kids _would have it? But, how do you even know? I thought you said there's no gene for it!" Johnstone looked around the table, waiting for an answer.  
  
"No, I said we haven't _found _a gene for it. Do you know how big the human genome is? Something like this is probably a combination of genes, and might be set off by a couple of different combinations. Not everything is a single-gene on-off switch." Mary shrugged. "And like any heritable disorder, it's not a _guarantee _your kids will have it, but the probability goes way up."  
  
"So this guy fucked up our entire family lines, basically. Except we're not related to our families, we're related to each other. So he fucked everybody involved." Johnstone's face darkened. "This is _bullshit_. I'm in."  
  
A nod spread around the table, a few hands were raised.  
  
"Here's how you can help us..." Mary started, picking up the data packet in the yellow envelope in front of Johnstone and sliding out one page of information.


	28. Chapter 28

"And now, we wait," Chaz observed, rolling his laundry to fit it back into his bag. "I'll probably come back up, later in the week, to talk to Lakeland, again."  
  
"If you think you're going to bone him, maybe tell him about me _first_, this time, since we've already met." Langly rolled his eyes, jamming things into his backpack. He heard the toilet flush, but Reid didn't reappear.  
  
"What do I need with the second generation, when I've got the original?" Chaz shrugged and checked the mini-fridge, to make sure they weren't leaving anything important, like DNA swabs or leftovers.  
  
Langly dropped his bag and crossed the room in a few long strides, turning Chaz with a hand on his shoulder. "It's a good fucking question, Villette, and you need to answer it, for _yourself_. I don't really care. I get to bone the hot fed, either way. But, you made this mistake once, and Mary's still pretty pissed. You can't piss off the rest of the clones, if we're going to get to the bottom of this. So, maybe keep your dick in your pants around Lakeland and Novak."  
  
"I keep telling you, it's not because she looks like you."  
  
"Tits and a PhD," Langly shot back, rolling his eyes.  
  
"Not how I'd have put it, but..." Chaz looked resigned, his shoulders creeping upward even as his head came down. "She's smart; she's pretty; and she's into me. And for a little while, that was enough. But, she's fundamentally disgusted by things I can't change, and I don't want any part of that."  
  
"Yeah, well, you keep staring at Novak."  
  
"Of all of you, she's most likely to become a killer. It's already there. She's already fighting it, but she's angry enough that there's not a lot of resistance. I can't blame her, but I can be concerned." Chaz shook his head and sat down on the top of the mini-fridge. "Lakeland's the only other adult survivor from birth I've met. It's _really _uncommon, and if Novak's right, there were others of you born beta, and they didn't make it, which is usually how that goes. I'm interested in how he survived. I'm more interested in _why _he was born anomalous. And then there's you. You're smart and you have fantastic legs, first of all --"  
  
Langly rolled his eyes, again. "No tits, no PhD."  
  
"I don't want to marry you. It matters a little less. And I'm pretty sure you only don't have PhD because you couldn't be bothered."  
  
"Flattery, much?" Langly glanced at the bathroom door, as the toilet flushed again, but the door didn't open.  
  
Chaz shook his head, dismissively. "That's not actually important. What's important is that you know me, and you like me anyway. You're at least _aware_ of a decent amount of the horrible shit I've been and done, and you don't _just_ want to sleep with me so you can say you did."  
  
"Horrible shit on that level doesn't even register. Come on, I do large scale political corruption and alien invasions. So, you're a freak of nature. So am I, these days. Pot, kettle. As far as I can tell, you're clear on kidnap, torture, misusing military resources to go after private citizens, and making 'patriotic' decisions that cost thousands of lives."  
  
Chaz's lips tightened, and he looked away.  
  
The light in Langly's eyes went out. "What the hell did you do?"  
  
"Nothing. Not in this timeline." Chaz pulled up one of his knees, unable to fit both feet on the top of the mini fridge with him. "I saw the future, and in it, I made a critical mistake that cost thousands of lives. I thought I was doing the right thing. Instead, I got us all killed."  
  
"Okay, so... this is not that future, right? You didn't do it again? You're not going to do it again?"  
  
"No, I'm not. I didn't. And I'm trying to keep other people from making the mistake for me." Chaz pressed his forehead against his knee. "But, I still did it once, and I have to live with that."  
  
"Okay, except _none of the rest of us do_. Because you didn't actually do it. You met some gamma fortuneteller, I'm assuming, who showed you something that was enough like something you'd do that you believed you could do it. Maybe it was something you meant to do, and they stopped you. But, that's just it. You found out what was going to happen and you didn't do it, because you're not completely fucking horrible, Villette. Look, maybe I'm biased, because you saved my life, but that's never stopped me from calling an asshole an asshole before."  
  
"I didn't save your life. Spencer did. I just kept him alive long enough to do it."  
  
"So, what I'm hearing is you _and _Reid saved my life. Together. Instant boner. You were _there_ for that part. And we did things that night that I don't ever want to do again, but they were fucking _hot_, and I'm amazed you want anything to do with me, when the two of you can do _that_."  
  
Chaz peered around the side of his knee. "Like I said, you've got great legs. Besides, you're the one I wanted first."  
  
"That is entirely because he was hallucinating loudly, and we both know it," Langly scoffed.  
  
"I may not see what he sees, but I like what I see, which was the whole point of this discussion. I like what I see; I like that you'll put up with me; I like the weird shit you say while you're falling asleep... Yeah, Jack Lakeland is fascinating, but there's nothing in there that makes me want to put up with his morning breath."  
  
"And _Novak_? Because I'm pretty sure if you're gonna, it's Novak."  
  
"I fucked one serial killer. I don't really need to do it again." Chaz slid off the mini fridge, back straightening as his feet touched the floor. "That's kind of the point of mistakes, isn't it? Not repeating them?"  
  
"One, she hasn't killed anyone, yet, and two, you didn't let that get in your way with my cousin," Langly snapped.  
  
"I also didn't actually think your cousin was a serial killer, by the time I got to considering it, for the record. I'm pretty sure Delia's going to commit a murder, at least one, and on at least the first one she's going to walk because it was self-defence. If it even occurs to anyone to charge her. She's not doing the kind of damage that's going to look like it came from _her_." Chaz jammed his hands into his pockets. "Let's just say I'm not looking forward to coming back here, in a few months, to take her to Idlewood."  
  
"Not really making me feel better about the whole Helmsman raid, Villette."  
  
"The difference is you don't _like _doing that. You're not looking for an excuse to do it. She's about this far--" Chaz held up two fingers, nearly touching. "-- from going after sleazebags in bars. And I'll be honest with you. If I thought she was going to stop at kicking the shit out of them, I'd look the other way and write it off as a public service. But, she's not. She had the perfect conversion to make her bloodthirsty, and the Anomaly is just leaning into it. I've seen it before; I know where this is going, and I don't want _any of it_. Be more worried about Lakeland, not that I'm interested in Lakeland, but as these things go... Besides, I think Lakeland's into Varga."  
  
"That's disgusting." Langly looked horrified. "She's-- We're-- _Eugh_!"  
  
"They just met for the first time, today, and they work in the same industry. She's not disgusted, when she looks at him. Remember, she doesn't look like his family, because _he_ doesn't look like his family, and he didn't grow up knowing he wasn't related to them. There's a whole level of warning signs that are missing between the clones -- also the part where physically, you're all almost the same person has got to be doing some weird shit to the subconscious perception of relatedness inside the group. I remember a study involving later meetings between twins separated at birth, but I feel like I should go read it again, because it's about to become extremely applicable." Chaz shrugged. "Anyway, yeah, Lakeland's into Varga, for the moment, but I'm taking bets that's going to snap back on him, once he gets a little closer to her. On the other hand..." He looked down at himself and caught Langly's eye, an apologetic tilt to his head.  
  
"Still gross. Not you. _Lakeland_."  
  
"Add it to the list." Chaz shrugged. "So, like I said, what do I need with the second generation, when I have the original?"  
  
"What happens when it turns out I'm not the original?"  
  
"I still get the good one. Do I care?"  
  
The conversation paused at the sound of the toilet flushing yet again.  
  
"Is he okay?" Langly asked, eyes on the bathroom door.  
  
"He knows better than to eat that much whipped cream, but he wasn't going to scrape it off in front of everyone. Especially not in front of that many anomalous individuals. It would've called too much attention to him. He's thin enough to pass as one of us, if nobody watches him eat."  
  
"For a guy as bright as he is, he's a fucking moron, sometimes."  
  
"Pot? Kettle."  
  
"Fuck you, Villette. I didn't bone a serial killer."  
  
"I didn't say I had the common sense in this relationship, and besides that, I didn't know she was a serial killer _at the time_!"  
  
"Tits and a PhD?" Langly asked, eyeing Chaz warily.  
  
"I could've loved her. I wanted to. She was trying to make the world a better place, but she couldn't figure out why the people she was trying to help kept dying. I didn't find out until we were halfway to her trying to hit me with lightning."  
  
"Great, so I remind you of your crazy serial killer ex."  
  
"No, you work with wires and wall current. She actually worked with _lightning_. She could tweak the ionization of the air, I think, and define the path it would take down. I don't remember the details, any more. It was incredible to watch. I was pretty sure I was going to piss myself and die, but it was incredible. _She _was incredible. She's still friends with Hafs. I can't. It's just a little too awkward, for me."  
  
Langly blinked and recoiled a bit. "You really get off on having the piss scared out of you, don't you?"  
  
"I really, really _don't_." Chaz stopped watching the door and went back to making sure they hadn't left anything behind.  
  
"Throwing yourself off cliffs? High-voltage gammas grabbing your junk? Pretty sure you do."  
  
"Jumping off cliffs is relaxing. I'm not _going _to hit the ground. I may miss it by a matter of inches, but that... pretty much is my beta power. I can do the calculations in a few seconds, in my head, and make adjustments on the way down. The day I don't miss the ground, it's time to start looking for a gamma fucking with the air pressure." Chaz stretched under the bed and came back with a sock. "Yours. And speaking of you, I'm not afraid of you. A good seventy percent of the time, you're terrified of hurting someone, and the other thirty, punching someone in the face would not be an inappropriate desire."  
  
"Stay the hell out of my head, Villette." Langly didn't even sound angry, for once, just tired.  
  
"I'm not in your head. I'm a profiler. I can tell how you work from out here." Chaz tossed the sock at Langly. "Spencer could do it, but he won't, because he's in love with you."  
  
"_Spencer _did it already, but that's not what he was looking for."  
  
The bathroom door swung open. "Why are we talking about me?"  
  
Langly blinked and failed to look innocent. "Uhh... we're not talking about you."  
  
"We're talking about profiling. You came up in passing." Chaz shrugged as innocently as he could manage. "I think I found everything we brought in with us--"  
  
"Did you switch the sheets?" Langly asked, glancing around for the sets he'd taken off the beds when they'd arrived.  
  
"I did." Reid held up a hand.  
  
"You going to survive at least as far as York?" Chaz asked, dragging himself back to his feet.  
  
"It's faster if you don't go all the way back to York," Langly reminded him. "It's also back roads and state highways, so it's not a big deal to pull over if he's going to puke again."  
  
"I'm done," Reid assured him, taking one last look around the room. "As much as I dislike hotels, I'm going to miss having a bed large enough for all three of us."  
  
"We'll pick up an air mattress on the way out of town," Langly offered, and Chaz shook his head.  
  
"I'd rather sleep on the floor. Have you slept on an air mattress? They're horrible, and they're worse with more than one person, and they're really not a good idea to, ah, use roughly. At least the floor isn't going to deflate under my shoulder."  
  
"We can argue about this in the car," Reid decided, pulling his coat on. "I just lost my lunch and probably most of breakfast, so whatever else we do on the way back to Saltville, we're getting food. Something greasy and non-dairy, and a cup of black coffee."  
  
"Fried chicken?" Langly suggested.  
  
Chaz shook his head. "Buttermilk."  
  
"Shit. Right." Langly rolled his eyes. "Potato chips?"  
  
"French fries," Reid decided, patting his pockets and picking up his bag. "Similar principle, but warmer."


	29. Chapter 29

Byers winced when the front door slammed. Nobody but Langly slammed the door _like that_. At least, he thought, most of the walls were back in, even if the wallpaper hadn't been replaced, yet.  
  
"Tell me I can flush the toilet!" Langly yelled down the hall.  
  
"It won't even make weird noises!" Frohike called back, from the living room. "And you can flush the toilet while the washer's running!"  
  
Langly yelled something about an act of god that was mostly lost to the sound of him running up the wooden stairs.  
  
Reid appeared at the entrance to the living room, with a faint smile and an apologetic shrug. "He's fine. He really just wants to make sure the plumbing actually works."  
  
"The last time he got like this, it was about the servers, after he had food poisoning for three days." Frohike shook his head and looked up from the crossword in the paper. "He gets like this. You surviving him?"  
  
"Let's say the question is more one of him surviving me, and he seems to be holding up."  
  
Frohike finally realised only two of a possible four people had returned. "Where's Villette?"  
  
"Checking the storm cellar." Reid eased himself into a chair and stretched his legs out. "Langly's probably going to join him, as soon as he's sure turning on the shower isn't going to flood the house."  
  
Byers came in with a tray of cups and a pot of coffee. "We've got an estimate for repairs to the structure. It's held up pretty well, all things considered."  
  
"Safe to say it hasn't been converted to a surveillance bunker, then?" Reid asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.  
  
"Is _that _what they're worried about?" Frohike rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Could've just asked."  
  
"It's Langly," Byers reminded him. "He's not going to be convinced until he checks it, himself."  
  
The sound of feet on the stairs rattled the living room ceiling again, and Langly was in the living room before the echoes faded, hands jammed under his arms and pacing. "Where the hell is the tile? There's no god damn tile. How the hell am I supposed to--"  
  
"Tomorrow," Byers said, sipping his coffee. "They're coming back to put the tile in tomorrow, in the bathroom and the kitchen, and the missing wallpaper in the kitchen should also be back by tomorrow night. The laundry's going to be repainted, but we know it works. Everything's fine, Langly. You're just a day early."  
  
"The wallpaper isn't going to match. There's no way--"  
  
"The wallpaper cost more than the last server you built," Frohike told him, tossing the newspaper onto the table. "You can thank Byers. He sent a photo and a sample to a company that specialises in historical restorations, and we had them rush it. It's sitting on the kitchen table. It looks a little different because it's not seventy years old and grimy as hell."  
  
Langly stopped pacing like he'd hit a wall, eyes fluttering as he tried to take that in. "You... you matched the wallpaper? You actually got it?"  
  
Byers rolled his eyes. "Langly, how long have we been doing this? We're usually new construction, but I do know some people. All it took was a few emails and some overnight shipping. I did choose not to match the original material, though. I got a synthetic. I hope that's okay. It'll look the same as the original wallpaper did when it was new, but you can wash it with a sponge and not worry about it fading or peeling. That seemed... important."  
  
Langly's jaw squared and his eyes rounded. He blinked a few more times. "And the tile?"  
  
"Tile's original," Frohike assured him. "They just don't make it like that any more. Good shit. Probably stand up to anything short of a bullet."  
  
Reid cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead, as the memory of what a bullet had done to his own bathroom came back to him. The memory of what that bullet had almost done to Langly...  
  
Langly's chin trembled, and he clenched his teeth again to stop it. "You fixed my house."  
  
"You asked us to," Byers reminded him.  
  
"And we did it right." Frohike finally went for the coffee. "And what's this _your house_ shit? I thought you hated Nebraska."  
  
"I grew up here," Langly snapped. "Right here, in this house, in the god damn cornhole of America. It's my god damn house, except I'm _dead_."  
  
Chaz stepped into the room, nearly soundlessly, snow-covered and grinning. "You would not believe what I found in the--" His eyes caught on Langly. "You okay?"  
  
"I'm fine," Langly said, one hand stretched across his eyes, glasses propped on the side of his finger. He sounded anything but fine.  
  
"We fixed the plumbing," Frohike said, picking up the crossword again. "Those are merely sobs of joy at the excellent craftsmanship."  
  
"Screw you, Doohickey," Langly snapped, voice still not quite behaving like he meant it to.  
  
"Not if you paid me, hippy," Frohike shot back, absently, as he counted the letters in twenty-one down.  
  
Reid raised his eyebrows and caught Chaz's eye. "You found something?"  
  
Chaz unloaded a few jars from his coat pockets onto the coffee table. "I have no idea if any of this is still good, but it looks like someone was using the storm cellar for storage. There's a whole lot of pickles and jam down there. Probably some other things, but that's what I could recognise at a glance. Mulberry jam! I really hope it's still good."  
  
Langly coughed a couple of times and cleared his throat, tipping his head back for a few seconds before he spoke. "Did you find the currant syrup? There's probably persimmons in honey, somewhere in there, too. If you find that, I want it. You can keep the pickled corn, though. I never liked pickled corn. There are so many things you can do with corn, why the _hell_ would you pickle it? I have no idea."  
  
Chaz squinted contemplatively at the jars. "Pickled corn sounds like it just needs some pepper and cilantro."  
  
"All yours." Langly held up his hands and stepped around the back of the sofa, making his way toward the kitchen and the back door. "Checking for bugs. We just had work done and we don't know anyone local, so..."  
  
"All the more reason no one would be bugging us," Frohike called after him. "For once..."  
  
"Let him do it." Byers sighed. "He'll calm down once he's sure... as much as he ever calms down. How were things in Lincoln?"  
  
"He's not taking it well." Chaz looked to Reid for confirmation.  
  
"I'm not sure any of us would. He's gone from being an only child to having ten siblings, and possibly sixteen, in... less than four months. I'd say he's taking it surprisingly well, under the circumstances." Reid sipped his coffee and watched the room.  
  
"Right. You were in the dark for that conversation we had right before we left. And thank you for that, by the way. It's good to know you can hold the door shut under certain kinds of strain." Chaz looked a little too amused.  
  
"Other kinds of strain may have convinced me it was a good skill to learn." Reid had the presence of mind to look both apologetic and amused at the reminder of that particular event. "What were the two of you talking about, besides me?"  
  
"I swear we weren't really talking about you."  
  
"I heard my name."  
  
"In passing." Chaz shook his head. "That really was the don't profile your boyfriend conversation. But, he was, ah, warning me off the clones. Thought I'd been flirting with Lakeland."  
  
"Oh, for god's sake," Frohike groaned. "Don't you have enough problems with just two of them? Even Byers was smart enough to stop at _one_."  
  
"One really is enough," Chaz agreed, finally sitting on the arm of the couch. "It just took me a little longer than it should have to figure out _which_ one. Which is _not_ Jack Lakeland."  
  
"You weren't flirting with Lakeland, but I can see where Langly might've gotten the idea, if he didn't figure out what you _were _doing. But, I think you did it well. You need Lakeland and Novak to trust us, so they'll actually call if something goes wrong. I'm pretty sure Lakeland, at least, will. Novak..." Reid's eyes turned wary as he shook his head. "I think if she calls anyone, it's going to be Mary, and I don't think she will."  
  
"Because we're feds, and the only ones of us who would understand what's happening to her are _men_. We'd do better with her if Mary were a gamma. I should've called Hafs."  
  
"Who's probably on at least one other case, by now, so I don't think she'll be flying across the country to help. They can't afford to lose both of you at the same time. Both of _us_ is bad enough."  
  
"So, they're not all...?" Frohike gestured at Chaz.  
  
"Eight of them are anomalous. Two of those eight -- Jack Lakeland and Delia Novak -- are gammas. I don't have a lot of concerns about Lakeland, honestly. If he were going to become a killer, it would've happened years ago, and there would have been a rash of inexplicable drowning deaths among boys his age. Novak is a lot more recent and a lot more violent. Someone's going to grab her shoulder in a bar and end up dead." Chaz rubbed his face. "Fortunately, she's stopped going to bars since she converted. But, I don't know how long that's going to last, and I don't know that not being in a bar is going to prevent the same behaviour from setting her off, somewhere else."  
  
"And there's nothing to be done, because until she does kill someone, there's no guarantee that she will. I mean, _you_, Langly..." Byers gestured at Chaz.  
  
"Don't be so sure about me." Chaz shook his head. "Some days, _I'm_ not so sure about me. I've never killed anyone under circumstances that weren't justifiable, and so far, nobody's really disagreed with my judgement. I just hope they will, the day I'm wrong, because that's exactly it -- in the beginning, it looks justifiable. Everything from 'he was going to kill me' to 'I was sure he was trying to hurt that woman' to, and I actually saw this one, 'those little shits killed my cat'. It starts out as a reaction, and then it turns pre-emptive. I've watched this so many times..." He tipped his chin at Reid. "Spencer's got the right idea, and if I wasn't usually dealing with people you _have _to kill, once the guns come out, I'd take a lesson. Unfortunately, kneecapping someone who can turn your brain into jelly and squeeze it out your nose, from twenty feet away, isn't terribly useful."  
  
Langly had come in through the back door, somewhere in the middle of that, and could be heard banging around in the kitchen, still obviously distressed and obviously not talking about it. Reid knew enough to leave him to it. He was pretty sure Langly would wake him up in the middle of the night to rant about everything that was bothering him, before passing out on his shoulder.  
  
"So, we still don't know anything else about the clinic?" Frohike asked.  
  
"Not much more, yet. Some of the families are looking through their old records to see if they saved anything that might help. Being that it's about the birth of their children, some of them held on to everything they could, and some of them threw it away as soon as they were sure the children were okay, so the kids wouldn't find it and ask questions. Similar pattern to adoptive parents, actually," Reid observed, staring into space across his coffee.  
  
Byers looked from Reid to Chaz. "So, what do we do, now?"  
  
"Now, we wait. Maybe we go home, for a bit. It's not like we can't work with the data from there." Chaz shrugged, his shoulders staying defensively high. "I'm not sure there's much left to find in Nebraska, unless we want to track down the other six clones."  
  
"Which we should," Reid reminded him. "They _are _potentially dangerous, and if nothing else, those families may have more records that could help."  
  
Chaz rubbed his face again. "I need to call Falkner and press her for an answer on the clinic. We have eight clones who already need it, nine if we count Langly, and it's not going to hurt the rest of us to have an emergency medical contact who's not either an ME or working in an inpatient psych facility. I have Frost listed, right now, because I know she can cut the red tape for me, if something goes more wrong than usual, and it'll raise eyebrows, but a hell of a lot less eyebrows than most of my other best options."  
  
"We can be operational, with at least a skeleton crew of nutritionists and office staff, inside six months," Byers assured him. "And the office staff will all have been cleared to work for _us_, so you won't have much to worry about, there."  
  
"We're stricter than the NSA," Langly said from the doorway, where he stood with a small mixing bowl full of cereal and milk. "And the entire property's clean, except for one detector buried in the driveway. I didn't catch it, sooner, because why the hell would I care if it wasn't in the house? But, it's feeding into the phone box, so it's not wireless, and we're not using the landline, so I didn't pick it up there. I unplugged all the handsets anyway, when we got here, because I was too god damn lazy to go looking for a self-powered infinity tap." He pointed at Frohike with his spoon. "Which this isn't. It's just a vehicle detector. A weight-sensor, like you find in a drive-through."  
  
"So, someone's been tracking people coming and going..." Byers looked confused, and Langly asked the question that stayed on his face.  
  
"And who the hell cares about _that_?"  
  
"It's wired to the phone box, instead of being wireless, so it's probably been here a long time," Frohike pointed out. "Which may mean it's actually your _mom's_. Could've been part of a security system. The phones are disconnected, so we don't know if it's supposed to ring the house when someone crosses it. Or the _barn_, maybe, to tell you someone's on the way to the house."  
  
"I could very loudly argue that, or I could eat this and then go prove you wrong." Langly eyed Frohike like he was debating it.  
  
Frohike looked surprised that Langly hadn't just started in. "You feeling all right?"  
  
Langly leaned against the edge of the wall, pouring sugary milk into his mouth. "I'm _eating_, Frohike. Don't start."  
  
"That's a 'no'," Reid translated, quietly.  
  
Frohike shot a look at Byers. "That's a 'who are you and what have you done with Langly?'"  
  
"Give him twenty minutes for the sugar to make it to his brain," Chaz suggested, getting up and heading for the kitchen, which involved passing Langly, who eyed him warily. "What do you want for dinner? I'll cook."  
  
"I don't care as long as it's deep fried. Or a casserole. Or a deep-fried casserole."  
  
Chaz looked over his shoulder and pointed at Byers. "Corn starch, a few pounds of chicken, cream of chicken soup, and potatoes?"  
  
"No cream of chicken. Cream of mushroom?" Byers offered an inquisitive look.  
  
Chaz tipped his head back and forth, debating it. "Yeah, all right. We've got some kind of vegetables that didn't come out of a can, right?"  
  
"Carrots, onions, peas, broccoli, and peppers. Peppers are freeze-dried. Carrots, peas, and broccoli are frozen."  
  
"Ooh, broccoli!" Chaz nodded, slowly, edging past Langly toward the kitchen. "I can work with this."  
  
Reid looked past the fire at Byers. "No matter how many times he cooks and I like it, I still find it concerning that I'm never sure what he's cooking until I've put it in my mouth."  
  
"I feel that way about Langly's cooking." Frohike's eyes gleamed as he counted the seconds until some muffled and garbled protest could be heard from behind the enormous amount of cereal in Langly's mouth. Yeah, he'd be fine.


	30. Chapter 30

Once he finished his cereal, Langly sat down at the kitchen table, mostly ignoring Chaz, as he cooked... something that looked like it was going to be epic, on one hand, and on the other hand, something Reid probably shouldn't be eating, after the day they'd had. Either way, not his problem until it was good and done. What was his problem was the sensor in the driveway. Who had it belonged to, and _when_?  
  
By some strange twist of Nebraska, which he was more inclined to attribute things to than fate, his parents' phone number -- and why the hell did he still remember that, after all these years -- had remained unused since it was disconnected, after his mother died. Not much turnover in the block assigned way out here, really. But, he'd turned it back on, for certain values of 'on' that would let him use the line and would direct incoming calls to a log and backtrace system. Just in case this wasn't some feature of a long-disabled security system, he wanted to know if anything followed him home. In fact, he wanted it to follow him home.  
  
The whole thing bothered him, really. His parents were the absolute opposite of technologically inclined -- they'd run the farm the way dad's grandparents had, and it had stayed afloat, like that, as far as he knew. Of course, really, what the hell did he actually know? It's not like he'd been paying any attention he didn't have to, when he'd lived here the first time.  
  
As he set up the scripts on his laptop, it occurred to him that he should've brought more substantial equipment, for something like this, and having it sent now would send up a red flag. The hell with it. If he needed to buy a new battery when this was all over, that was the least of his concerns. He set up the machine not to sleep, then brought it over to the counter under the old, yellow rotary phone and plugged it into an outlet and what should've been a dead line. Grabbing a signal, he spoofed a number and called in, and ... crashed the backtrace. Shit. Right. It would handle most things it was likely to run into, but it wouldn't handle him or Hafs coming at it. Okay, that probably needed an explicit error handler, and a few more safeguards. It did start back up, after it crashed, though, so at least he hadn't broken _that_.  
  
An hour later, he was back in the kitchen chair, head tipped back, fingers flicking, finalising the last of the handlers for things that weren't supposed to happen. The entire kitchen smelled like fried chicken, and the heat from the oven would've been overpowering, if he hadn't been working. His first awareness of the room was when Chaz grabbed one of his hands and wrapped it around a glass, not letting go until he opened his eyes and looked at it.  
  
"What's this?"  
  
Chaz lifted an eyebrow. "Drink it. You've been going way too long, and dinner's not ready yet."  
  
"Notice that's not the answer to my question." Langly squinted suspiciously at Chaz as he sniffed the drink. "Orange chocolate?"  
  
"Chocolate protein powder in orange juice."  
  
"That sounds a lot worse than it smells," Langly admitted.  
  
"Tastes better than it sounds, too. Kind of like those Christmas oranges, but I think it needs more cocoa powder for that, and I just didn't pick any up last time I was in town." Chaz went back to cooking, the smells of yeast and onion having joined the scent of fried chicken. "Seriously, drink it. There's a whole pitcher, over here, so I can pour you another one, when you finish it."  
  
"Thanks, I think." It was better than Langly expected. Not quite Christmas oranges, but definitely somewhere around chocolate syrup on orange sherbet. "Where's Reid?"  
  
"Filling in some blanks on the other six clones, with Fitz. He's pretty good for not being, well..." Chaz gestured at Langly.  
  
"There are few people still living who understand the fundamental infrastructure of the internet better than he does. The rest of it, well, he's never gotten _caught_, but that's an awareness of his own limitations." Langly finished the drink and put the glass on the table.  
  
"You'd do with a better awareness of your limitations," Chaz muttered, wiping his hands off and picking up the pitcher.  
  
"I'm absolutely aware of my own limitations. I just ignore them sometimes, and there isn't a damn thing you can say about that without sounding like an absolute hypocrite, and we both know it." Langly's attention faded back into his work as Chaz refilled the glass.  
  
First, find the sensor, find where the data was going. Trace the number... hit a wall. Disconnected. Held by at least six subscribers in Lincoln since the mid-90s, which either said it wasn't a security system or that it was an off-site security system. But, there weren't any signs of the house ever having been wired. No keypad, no wires on the windows, no extraneous circuits. Records before the 90s got more difficult to read. That was the old system, and only the live accounts had transferred. He wasn't sure having that information would help, though -- without knowing _when_ he was looking for, unless there was a particularly suspicious account holder, he still wasn't going to know. But, he knew someone had been watching.  
  
He dug deeper into the circuitry, to find out what else the thing did, if anything. A trigger, a timer, another trigger. He could find the wires, but they were cut. What had been there? When? _Why_? It was taking input from those wires and sending it without encoding or saving it, which wasn't surprising, the thing had no storage capacity. It had to have gone in after he'd left, or he'd never have finished a fucking download, with it seizing the line. But, what was it doing?  
  
Step on the pad, call home, send a signal, wait and call back with the reply, send another signal, call back with the reply, sleep. Where were the dead ends of the wires? One of them he couldn't recognise, but another ran alongside power to the porch light. The delay-- how long was the delay? Long enough for someone to park and get out of the car. Cameras. There had been _cameras_. ... But, those things had been clunky and low-resolution, for a long time, even if they had technically become usable for this kind of thing, in the eighties. Not _commercially_, but... And the bandwidth required would've left the phone occupied for way too long. How the hell? And again, _who_ the hell? And still, most importantly, _when _the hell? Probably not before the mid-to-late eighties, if those were cameras.  
  
He went back in after whatever he was missing, because something obviously was. There was no way he was reading this right. And who the hell would've been interested in his parents' visitors? No, there was something else here. He'd missed something.

* * *

Reid had finally started to drift off after Chaz's last nightmare when Langly started shivering. With an inquisitive sound, he reached up to turn the electric blanket back on and kicked at the bottom of the thick comforter on top of them, to make sure everyone's feet were under it. They'd decided, after a lot of complaining in the car, to buy three massive synthetic down blankets and an electric blanket to put between the two on the bottom. And Reid had to admit, it was the warmest he'd been in anything like a bed in ... probably ever, actually. It was almost too warm, which meant Chaz was finally comfortable, and Langly, pinned between them, should've been okay.  
  
It wasn't until Reid heard the stuttered breath and felt Langly twist his shoulder out from under Chaz to curl up around _him_, instead of serving as a pillow for both of them, that he realised Langly wasn't _cold_. And for just one moment, he resented the shit out of the entire situation. He couldn't carry both of them. Not when Chaz had consistently cost him more sleep than he could really afford, no matter what he'd said about it, for the better part of two weeks, now. But, he knew Chaz was getting better, _sleeping _better, finally, and this would be over, soon. Soon, he'd be able to get a consecutive five hours of sleep, and he'd be all right.  
  
But, for now, he made another inquisitive sound and wrapped an arm around Langly's waist, tucked his head under Langly's chin. "'S wrong?" he mumbled, the words thick with all the sleep he hadn't gotten.  
  
"I can't do this. I thought I could do this, but I can't do this. I can't--" Langly suddenly froze. "Oh, hell, did I wake you up? God damn it. Shh. Go back to sleep, Reid."  
  
"I'm right here," Reid pronounced carefully, against Langly's faintly-sweaty t-shirt. "Whatever it is, I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere." He yawned. "Except to sleep. You should come with me. Turned the heat back on. It'll be warm. I'll be right here, no matter what. If I'm not here, I had to pee, and I'll be back in a minute."  
  
Langly chuffed in amusement. "Okay, see, that's a really good reason. I'm pretty sure peeing on the electric blanket would be a bad idea, so definitely get up to do that." He gently stroked Reid's back, letting the long, slow breaths calm him. "You're really tired, aren't you? How long have you been lying to Villette?"  
  
Reid made a long, low sound of annoyance, before he could stop himself, the exhaustion putting itself firmly in front of his better judgement. "'M not lying, unless it's on the floor. Sleeping now." He pulled Langly's leg up from where it rested on his thigh to the top of his hip, hoping the tingling in his knee would stop. And then he let his hand follow that leg back up, absently stroking and kneading the back of Langly's thigh, the sensations from the tips of his fingers refusing to reassemble correctly in his brain.  
  
"Yeah." Langly pressed a kiss to the top of Reid's head and pulled the blanket up a little higher. "Sleeping now."

* * *

The next time Reid woke, the light in the room had changed. Four hours at least, which wasn't really enough, but if he put enough coffee on it, he'd live. And then he realised what had woken him. Langly had gotten up, and was now pacing beside their makeshift bed, eyes closed, fingers flicking, muttering quietly to himself. Not serious, then. Nothing he had to worry about. And in that case, he was going back to sleep.  
  
What had woken Langly, though, was the ping he'd gotten on the ghost of his parents' phone number. Someone had hit it and realised it wasn't a voicemail system, when it bit back. He'd slipped into the system and started testing the intruder as soon as he'd woken, but after a few minutes of batting at each other, he'd gotten an unexpected message.  
  
> _Heard you were dead. A real shame._  
  
That added a few milliseconds to his response to the next push.  
  
< _Pretty sure you've got the wrong number._  
  
> _Pretty sure I don't, Ringo. I'd know that opening anywhere, and you didn't take apprentices, like Vanity._  
  
< _Ringo? Ringo's dead. Everybody knows that._  
  
> _Well, if you're not Ringo, then..._  
  
Langly saw it coming long before it hit, which was an odd thing to say about an attack launched and defused in less than half a second, but time stretched out strangely, when he was working. But, he knew that move. He hadn't seen that move since the early nineties, but he knew it well.  
  
< _Barrabus?_  
  
> _Who's asking?_  
  
< _I thought you ran off to Canadia with that crazy raver with all the money. What are you doing here? And by 'here', I mean up my ass about this phone number._  
  
> _A better question is why you're ass-deep in the remains of a job taken down by some people I think we both know._  
  
< _Bought a house, found a dead bug. Wanted to know what I was planning to exterminate._  
  
> _You keep fucking with this and you'll get twice as dead._  
  
< _Didn't know you cared._  
  
> _I was hoping you'd stay dead._  
  
< _Please, you'd still be up against White Rabbit and Vanity. So, where's your handle in all this?_  
  
> _Wrong question, Ringo._  
  
<_ If we know who took it down, and you heard about it, when did it come down?_  
  
> _During your funeral._  
  
< _If you wanted me to know who took it down, you'd have said it. So, when did it go up?_  
  
> _Not my business. Call your Aunt Copper._  
  
< _Auntie's still in business?_  
  
> _Aunt Copper is eternal._  
  
< _But, what--_  
  
> _Get the hell out, Ringo. Disconnect, purge, and burn._  
  
"What the _hell_, Barrabus!?" Langly snapped, the words coming out of his mouth, as Barrabus disconnected.  
  
Reid made a small inquisitive noise, and Chaz pulled a pillow over his head. The space Langly had left remained between them, as Reid, at least waited for him to come back to bed. But, if he was going to call Aunt Copper, it was probably best the feds slept through it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An almost-invisible cameo that I've been joking about throwing in for months... *whistles innocently*


	31. Chapter 31

When Langly got down to the kitchen, he found he was the only one awake, which was good, because he didn't want to justify this to Frohike. Neither of them had done business with Aunt Copper in longer than he liked to think about, mostly because anything she could get, he could usually get -- aside from the whispers in some quarters -- and it wouldn't cost them an arm and a leg. The problem with dealing with professionals was that they charged professional prices. And he wouldn't be calling her, now, but something had brought Barrabus the Grey back out of the depths of time better forgotten, and they really weren't getting anywhere with Granger's clinic. There was no guarantee Auntie would know more than they did, but he could afford to find out if she did.  
  
Getting in touch with Auntie was always the same. You called her number, and if you were lucky, the call connected. If you were unlucky, the number just... wouldn't be in service for _you_. But, the number had never changed. Rumour had it that it rang into the back room of the bar and breakfast she ran, somewhere in the Southwest. Few people knew the name of the place, or what city it was in, and everybody knew better than to try to find out. She liked to control who knew where her information was coming from. There were whispers she had more than one bar, these days, but no one knew how true that was, either. You never knew with whispers about Auntie.  
  
But, Langly knew how to get her attention, how to be relatively sure he'd get through the first line, since he'd just talked to Barrabus. He put on his headset, checked all the connections, and made the call from his parents' number. He was expecting to get her receptionist -- the second line of defence -- so the voice on the line with its thick, and probably fake, Hong Kong accent surprised the hell out of him.  
  
"You got some balls for a dead man," Aunt Copper opened, with no preface.  
  
Langly checked his settings one last time before he spoke. "Barrabus called you, but Barrabus thinks he found Ringo. Ringo's been dead almost twenty years. You can call me Spastic, and you should know I can pay."  
  
"How'd you get this number, then?"  
  
Langly giggled, counting on the voice processor to make it believable. "Now, that would be telling..."  
  
Aunt Copper gave a sharp laugh. "Ha! Balls. Just like that Ringo. So, tell me, if the lady's paying, what's the lady buying? Come on, I've got business to do, here."  
  
"A little bit of gravedigging. I'm looking for old news. And you answered this call yourself, so you know at least part of what I'm going to ask you. I'm working for some people who just bought a house in Nebraska, and it's got the remains of an old remote surveillance system. I want to know everything you can find about that -- who put it in, when was it active, who took it out--"  
  
"You talked to Barrabus, and you don't know who took it out? If you're asking about the place you want me to think you're calling from, then that was Kim of Bedlam's team, and that's all you get, before we talk prices, because _that _you could've gotten anywhere. But, you _didn't_, because you're asking me." There was a certain amount of judgement in her voice.  
  
"Keep a tally, Auntie. I've got a list. You can tell me what it costs at the end."

* * *

Chaz woke slowly, which was an interesting sensation all by itself, considering he usually startled awake. No nightmares, though. Not even the unsettling hint of something wrong behind an otherwise reasonable dream. He wondered how much of that was Spencer, and how much of that was the fact he just wasn't cold, for the first time in weeks. His arm was asleep, though, and his shoulder was probably going to give him a hard time, once he got Spencer off of it. Not that he particularly wanted to get Spencer off his shoulder, or off his arm. Okay, maybe off his arm. The stabbing-tingling in his fingers might have been what woke him.  
  
He wondered when Langly had gotten up, and then how long he'd been asleep, but he hadn't quite figured out the light from that window, yet, and the clock was over his head and aimed at the bed. No yelling from downstairs was probably a good sign as far as Langly went. Time -- he had time. And with it, he watched Spencer sleep, slipping quietly into his dreams. A dream of a hospital, not a memory nor a nightmare, but just a dream. With every long, slow breath, the colour of one of the walls changed. Every fourth beat of Spencer's heart, someone else sat in the chair beside him, holding his hand. No one he recognised, even if he spoke and joked with all of them as if they were just one person, and someone he knew, someone he trusted. And Chaz watched this dream version of Spencer smile like a man who'd never been betrayed, and slipped back out of the dream before the ache in his chest could spill into it, contaminate it. He wanted to give that image to Langly. He wanted to see it in print, to hold it in his hands, to share it with Spencer.  
  
But, that Spencer, that bright and happy dream version, wouldn't be here. Probably wouldn't be an FBI agent. Definitely wouldn't be curled up around his side, breathing against his chest. So, yeah, it sucked to be either of them, really, but this timeline wasn't all bad. Of course, he knew that. He'd fought for it. He'd never considered changing anything else, really, except kicking himself that he hadn't gone back for Daphne. But, that change would've rippled so far... No, this, right here, this was good enough. This was definitely a version of reality he'd buckle the timeline to come back to, if he had to do it again, and there were few things that terrified him more than the idea of having to do it again.  
  
That wasn't a concern for now, he reminded himself. There were no concerns, now, except a case that was fifty years old and a recently-converted gamma who was probably going to kill someone -- several someones -- but hadn't gotten around to it. Which, really, was a slow day. He didn't have to get up. He didn't _want_ to get up. He'd really like it if his fingers didn't hurt, but it was a small price to pay for a warm body wrapped around his side. And not just any warm body, either. He'd had other offers, but none of them were quite this appealing. One day, though. One day, he'd find a woman he could appreciate almost as much as Spencer. Someone smart. Someone who'd put up with him. Someone who wouldn't be afraid of Hafs. Someone who'd tolerate the fact he was probably still going to be spending some nights with Spencer, because they just ... They'd become something else, and he wasn't sure he wanted to give that up, and he was sure that was selfish.  
  
He could feel Spencer starting to wake up, muscles flexing and subtly stretching, that little purr of an almost-yawn, Spencer's toes sliding down his shin, and that bleary-eyed look that settled on his face -- considering, still not quite awake.  
  
"You okay?" Reid managed, after a moment.  
  
"I'm really pretty good, actually." Chaz ran a hand through Reid's hair.  
  
"Good. Stay that way." Reid tried to get up, but his arm absolutely refused to work the way he wanted it to.  
  
"That's what you get for sleeping on my arm," Chaz teased. "But, if you want the rewards for keeping me sane, those are much more pleasant."  
  
"Let me stop you right there, if that's a come on."  
  
"It's not." Chaz untangled himself and gathered Reid into his arms. He really only needed one _hand _for that. "I'm going to move you to the bed, with one of the blankets and the electric, and then I'm going to get you something to drink. I'm not sure how long we've been asleep, but I'm pretty sure you should do more of it, and I should bring you breakfast in bed."  
  
"Langly's going to take issue with us getting jam on the sheets." Reid raised an eyebrow. "And you should put me down, because I need a bathroom a lot more than I need more sleep."  
  
"Jam on the sheets and _I'm_ not supposed to be coming on to _you_?" Chaz set Reid on the edge of the bed, anyway, because it was easier than trying to put him back on the floor with only one working hand.  
  
"I slept on my arm wrong." Reid stretched his fingers and glared at his hand, professorially displeased.  
  
"No, you slept on _my_ arm wrong." Chaz tried to rub the feeling back into his hand as he stepped out of Reid's way. "And I'm still getting you breakfast, so go back to bed, when you're done."  
  
"I can take care of--"  
  
"Me. You can take care of _me_. And I know this hasn't been easy, and I know you need food and rest, and right now, we don't have a hell of a lot else to do, until we're ready to go for the other six. So, just let me return the favour, Spencer. Let me help you recover from taking care of me."  
  
Reid got up, lips thin, not looking at Chaz. He stood beside the bed for a moment, then looked up the few inches between them and tipped a finger toward the door. "I have to pee."  
  
He walked out without another word.

* * *

"Anything?" Chaz asked as he walked into the kitchen, and Langly nearly jumped out of his skin, before slapping a button on the side of his headset.  
  
"Nothing you have to worry about, yet. Maybe in a few hours. Got a source who's--" He tapped the button again, more gently. "Did that go through okay for you? Good! I'll be expecting the first shipment soon! Thank you, Auntie!"  
  
Chaz stared in confused horror as Langly took a few deep breaths, pressed the button on the headset, and tossed it on the counter.  
  
"What?" Langly looked up at him.  
  
"I, ah... That... Yes, that is exactly what I was about to ask you." Chaz blinked a few times and eyed Langly a bit sideways, as he made his way into the kitchen proper and started pulling things together for pancakes. "I'm making breakfast for your boyfriend, who needs to go the fuck back to bed. You want pancakes, while I'm standing here?"  
  
"Yes to pancakes. What the hell kind of question is that?" Langly pulled the laptop closer and punched a few buttons. "To answer your other question..."  
  
A small section of conversation played, apparently between an Asian woman and an Australian woman. Something about negotiating payment for services to be rendered in the near future. And then the Australian woman spoke the line Chaz had walked in on, and he nearly poured an egg down his arm.  
  
"Spastic Fantastic, a woman in her 20s, who looks like just enough on paper to get into a DDR competition. I'm way the hell too busy with this Granger shit to stay on the team, right now, but if Spastic shows back up, somebody'll take us, later." Langly shrugged. "The important thing is that she's not really real. She's a paper ghost, so anyone trying to go after her is going to hit a wall in all directions. It's not that I don't trust my source, it's just that I do trust my source. I did business with her, and that's saleable information, like anything else, for the right price. I don't know that she doesn't _already _have a contract to pass on anyone asking about the things I just put in for, and she's very good at what she does. You don't go to Aunt Copper unless you can use the information faster than the fact that you have it can be used against you. In this case? Everyone's been dead for like thirty years, so I think I've got a bit of a buffer. And if anybody goes after Spastic, I'm going to hear about it."  
  
"Your alter ego is an Australian woman half your age." Chaz looked like he was still trying to absorb this, as he knocked the last lumps out of the batter.  
  
"The paper ghost it would be the least effort for me to use for this job--"  
  
"You just admitted to entering DDR competitions in her name."  
  
"She's the ideal mid-level DDR player profile. That's exactly what she was designed for. She wouldn't stand out. _I would_." Langly rolled his eyes and nervously checked several email accounts. "Forty-something-year-old American dude playing DDR? At the competition level? No way. That's how you make a splash."  
  
"I'm... Still going to take me a bit." Chaz shook his head as he greased the pan. "Currants okay with you? I've still got some left from the cake."  
  
"Yeah, sure. I like currants." Langly finally caught the first packet from Aunt Copper, and started flipping through it distractedly. "It's not that weird, Villette."

* * *

After some amount of debate with himself, Reid _did _finally go back to bed, having rescued his tablet from his bag, on the way back across the room. He'd never admit it, but the thing had become useful to him, on this trip, mostly because he'd finally given in and let Langly set it up for him. Now it worked in a way he understood, even if he didn't trust it half as much as he did paper notes, but paper notes wouldn't turn into audio books, in moments like these, and he'd at least credit the godforsaken chunk of plastic with that.  
  
He was propped up with pillows, with the electric blanket pulled all the way up and tucked behind one shoulder, listening to, of all things, a children's book of Norse legends. The simplified stories reminded him of other parts of the mythos, and he sat with his eyes closed, half-asleep, letting the tales lead his mind in circles. ... The Valkyrie-slayer... the body in the parking lot... _Langly_, and the blood, so much blood...  
  
He reached out and switched to a different book, hoping to find something that wouldn't remind him of a case. Tolkien, maybe, though The Hobbit would probably be easier to fall asleep to than The Silmarillion, which was a pity, really, because he liked The Silmarillion. And as he considered that, it occurred to him that not dropping the book on his face when he fell asleep was another benefit to this arrangement. And not dropping the tablet on his face, either, since he didn't have to hold it and read from it, if it read to him. Still, the words were too slow, like this, and if he sped them up too much, they stopped making sense. But, regardless of what he might have thought, when he first got up, he really was tired, and slow was probably all right, except for the part he was half-likely to forget what was going on between words. But, then he was probably at the reading the same page three times point, anyway, even if that was _still_ faster than listening to it.  
  
He was, in fact, tired. Probably exhausted, all things considered, and in an extremely unpleasant mood. Sleep. He'd sleep and then try again, he thought, as the door opened.  
  
"Hey, I didn't put the orange juice on the nightstand to look pretty." Chaz balanced the laptop tray with a plate of buttery, syrup-soaked pancakes and a thermal cup of cocoa in one hand and closed the door behind him with the other.  
  
Reid took a deep breath not to snap at him. "Sleeping." He pointed at the bed. "I'm going to do more of it."  
  
"Eat this. Drink some juice." Chaz set the tray across Reid's lap. "You've been asleep long enough you really need to have breakfast before you go back to sleep."  
  
"And whose fault is that?" Reid snapped, shock flashing across his face, one hand clutching at the blanket as his eyes drifted shut. "I'm sorry. I don't know what--"  
  
"I do. It's fine." Chaz put his hand over Reid's. "I'm so sorry. Why didn't you tell me it had gotten this bad?"  
  
"You needed that sleep more than I did. I'm--" Reid shook his head. "I ... I haven't been where you were, but I'm sufficiently familiar with some neighbouring states to understand the strain you were under. I knew you'd get better. All I had to give you was time and rest, but unlike the _last time_ I had to do this, you were still in the middle of working a case. I could look tired, for those interviews. You couldn't look haunted." He managed a weak smile. "You look better."  
  
"I am better. I swear to you, Spencer, I'm better. At least for values of 'better' that are in the vicinity of where I was before Weaver got to me, before I even went to Midland. I'm all right." Chaz tipped his head and didn't look straight at Reid. "And you've got pains in your fingertips and a splitting headache, and you'd rather punch me in the face than listen to another word I have to say."  
  
Reid paused and blinked. "I thought I closed that door."  
  
"You did. I just know that look." Chaz held out the bottle of orange juice. "Drink the juice and talk to me for a few minutes. I know when you ate, last, and you've been awake more than I have, at a glance. You also eat less than I do. I know you're ... actually, I _don't_ know that you're not burning calories when you come back at me. I just know that you're not burning _enough _calories to be anomalous in your own right. If you converted while I wasn't looking, you'd be dead, with what you eat."  
  
"I'm not losing weight," Reid assured him, taking the bottle and opening it. "I'm just ... tired. I'm the kind of tired where time has stopped having meaning, and I'm losing my train of thought between words."  
  
Chaz just stared at him for a few seconds. "Okay, and that gets you _lunch_ in bed, too. I'll tell you what: I'm going to bring you a small meal every four hours, until you feel like yourself, again. You really need to eat, Spencer. You've been running on almost no sleep _and _almost no food. You shouldn't be doing either, but you really can't do both."  
  
"I have to--"  
  
"Unless the end of that sentence is 'pee' or 'call Prentiss', no, you don't. The case is on pause, while we wait for Langly's new source to come up with something useful, or the clones to get back to us with documentation. Seriously, Spencer, just... have some breakfast and take a nap. We've got everything under control."  
  
"I want you to take a moment and listen to yourself." Reid took a long swig of warm orange juice.  
  
Chaz nodded deeply, head tipped to one side. "Yeah, all right. You're right. I would _not_, in fact."  
  
"I promise to stay in bed, if you get me ... whatever we have that I haven't seen. I'll probably fall asleep reading it, and I will absolutely deny having said that, but put it in my hands, and I'll stay right here."  
  
Chaz nodded. "Done." He rested a hand on Reid's knee, under the blanket. "But, in a minute. I just want to sit here and appreciate you while we're both awake."  
  
"Basking in my presence," Reid teased, with a sidelong look.  
  
"I... might be..." Chaz shrugged, self-conscious, even now. "You probably saved my life."  
  
Reid shook his head, pointing at Chaz with the empty bottle of orange juice. "No. _You_ saved your own life. I just cleaned up after it."  
  
"I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction, in this case."


	32. Chapter 32

At some point, Reid insisted on moving downstairs, to the couch, if only to get further from the retiling work going on in the bathroom. The room with the fire was much warmer, and he was generally in the middle of whatever was of any importance in the house, even if he spent a significant amount of time trying to sleep. And that was unsettling. Generally, he didn't sleep much, at all. Even when he'd been sick, he hadn't slept this much. The last time he'd slept this much was after-- he wasn't going to think about that. That wasn't at all relevant.  
  
But, maybe it was. He'd been stressed beyond belief, between that and the OPR investigation that had followed. Other people who tried to blame him for her death, and he hadn't really tried to defend himself. It _was _his fault. He'd screwed up. Horrifically. Fatally. And in the wake of it, he hadn't wanted to be awake. He hadn't much wanted to be _alive_. And this was really pretty close to that kind of tired, but the only thing he'd been through, this time, was Chaz's nightmares. And they hadn't been pleasant, but they hadn't been ... _that _kind of upsetting.  
  
But, they would've been, to _Chaz_.  
  
And that, he realised, was what Chaz had been apologising for.  
  
It still wasn't as bad -- these were just echoes. He didn't particularly want to sleep until he died, but he definitely wanted to sleep. And if this was the distant, post-recovery echo of what Weaver had inflicted, it was genuinely surprising that Chaz had held himself together as well as he had, for so long. But, he hadn't. _Reid _had held him together. It had taken two of them to render Weaver's work mostly harmless, that quickly, and even then, it had taken a little more than two weeks. It was, Reid thought, definitely an argument for Idlewood. And he wondered if Idlewood was really ready for Weaver. Were there people who could shrug that off? Were there people -- especially somewhere like that -- who had no regrets that could be turned against them?  
  
He was sure there were procedures for this sort of thing. He was sure they'd dealt with things like this before. And he hoped he'd never have to deal with it again, but working with the ACTF meant he probably would. It was like so many things in his life, never wanting to repeat them and being forced back into them, over and over.  
  
When his tablet vibrated and Chaz tapped him on the forehead, he pushed that thought aside and opened his eyes. "Hmm?"  
  
Leaning over the back of the couch, because it was easier, Chaz swapped the tablet on the laptop tray for two bowls. "Sweet bean dumplings, high sugar, high protein. I've done better sauce, but that's edible, considering what we had in the house. And then Langly's got some stuff for us to have a look at, but eat, first."  
  
"Sweet bean... Where'd you find adzuki--"  
  
"I didn't. Don't ask. It's not the same, but it'll do in a pinch." Chaz cracked a smile as he backed toward the door, going back for his own bowl. "If I'm going to get you to eat enough to feel better, I should make sure the food's actually interesting."  
  
Reid eyed the bowl of dumplings with some amount of alarm. "Uhh..."  
  
"It's food, it tastes good, and there are no dairy products in it." Chaz turned around into the kitchen and nudged the back of Langly's head with his fingertips as he passed. "Get food, and go sit with Spencer. I don't know what meal this is, but we're all having it."  
  
Langly looked incredibly uncomfortable as he pulled his eyes away from the laptop. "Food. Yeah. Okay, that's... yeah."  
  
Frohike leaned into the kitchen. "Nobody touched the tile in here, right? Don't touch the tile until like noon, tomorrow."  
  
"Haven't even breathed on the tile." Chaz leaned over the counter and handed him a bowl of dumplings. "Where's Fitz? Tell him dinner's in the living room, because Spencer can't get off the couch."  
  
"We have to talk," Langly said, getting up and folding the laptop under his arm. "We have to talk about this house. We have to talk about _me_."  
  
By the time the last of the workmen were out, and they had all dragged chairs around the coffee table, Reid was working on his second bowl of dumplings, his legs stretched across Langly's lap. Maybe, just maybe, he was hungry. Again, unusual, but probably not that concerning, overall. Chaz was right. He'd been eating like he ate at home, except usually at home there weren't two gammas to finish the other half the sandwich before he got back to it.  
  
Langly wasn't really paying attention to which bowl of dumplings he was eating out of, but with the level of distress obvious on his face, Reid couldn't find it in himself to care. Jamming another dumpling into his mouth, Langly licked his fingers and shoved the laptop onto the table. He held up a finger until he managed to swallow at least some of what was in his mouth.  
  
"It's me. They were looking for me."  
  
Frohike blinked, squinting across the table at Langly. "Back up a step. Who? When? Why? Come on, flex those journalistic muscles."  
  
"The sensor in the driveway is the last remaining fragment of a much larger system that was intended to find _me_, if I came home or called home. Kind of makes me glad I skipped all that home for the holidays shit." Langly reached for another dumpling, just to do something with his hands, and knocked his knuckles against Reid's wrist, as he went for the sauce, giving up as the dumpling fell out of his fingers. "When we were reported dead, my parents didn't come to the funeral, but they did spend a lot of time at the church, which left the house open. Someone -- and I'll get to that -- hired Kim of Bedlam and his boys to come take the system out. They left the buried sensor and some wiring in the walls, so they could get the majority out in one go."  
  
"Belmont?" Reid asked, turning the sauce bowl to put the dropped dumpling closer to Langly.  
  
"What? _Oh_. No. I've never met the guy, but I've heard rumours he's pickier than Vanity about his team. Rumour has it that his team's an endpoint for, ah, let's say structural security specialists -- as opposed to system security specialists, like myself -- who were on the verge of getting busted."  
  
"Thieves," Chaz clarified. "High-end thieves."  
  
Langly nodded. "A lot of them, yeah. But, like, the kind of guys you could expect to break into a museum or a government research facility, and get back out unnoticed. Well, usually. And that's how they ended up with Kim of Bedlam. I couldn't say, one way or the other, but rumours, again, he's got a couple ex-CIA and former cartel assassins, too. He specialises in picking up extremely skilled people who need to disappear."  
  
"Bedlam's always been more Yves's problem than ours," Frohike explained, covering his mouth as he chewed and talked. "We're not usually interested in a lot of the same things, but every once in a while, we'll run up against a system his team put in."  
  
"And now, a system his team took _out_." Langly grabbed the sauce-soaked dumpling and almost got it into his mouth before it dripped. He wiped at the sauce spot on his jeans, while he chewed. "I'm still waiting for the extended background on who the hell put it in, but if I don't miss my guess, it's either someone directly connected with the clinic, or their backers. I'm one of the oldest survivors, if not _the_ oldest survivor, and I'm the one that got away. I'm pretty sure there are more of us outside Nebraska, but I'm also sure they left forwarding addresses, when they moved, which I didn't."  
  
Byers didn't quite look convinced. "You think that because you're an early survivor, and because we think Granger was breeding for the Anomaly, that they wanted to keep an eye on you, to figure out if your strain was actually viable. You needed to be under observation. But, while you were still here, who was watching? Even before you left, how would they know?"  
  
Reid had a sip of what must have been his sixth cup of cocoa, that day. Chaz had refused to bring him any coffee, which was probably revenge for the day without coffee in the hotel, and that was entirely fair. "Schools. If I were going to want to keep an eye on children from families that were unlikely to bring them to a doctor, regularly, I'd want someone in the schools, and someone with a certain amount of mobility -- travelling vaccination clinics, school nurses sometimes work a few days each in a few different schools if the district's poor, same with guidance counsellors and leaders for certain after-school activities. Scout leaders might also be useful. You want a small number of people with access to as many of the affected kids as possible, and you probably want people in positions where they could use a little extra money and wouldn't feel bad about reporting to a doctor about the health of their students. Because I can almost guarantee that's how it would've been presented, if the clinic or their backers didn't place the people in these roles -- 'these children were underweight at birth, and we have some lasting concerns about their development, if you could just fill out a quick questionnaire about them once a month', or once a week even..."  
  
Chaz nodded, even as he rolled his eyes. "It's not even that formal. A few calls from a concerned professional, and-- no, sorry, that's probably just me."  
  
Langly dripped sauce in his lap again as he gestured at Chaz with a dumpling. "Yeah, see, _you _can do that shit. The rest of us--"  
  
"No, I meant I was the underweight weirdo being watched. It's, ah... it's how I ended up with the ACTF."  
  
Reid made air quotes with both hands. "Stephen fucking Reyes." He cleared his throat. "I know that look."  
  
Chaz shook his head, exasperated, and tipped his chin toward Reid. "What he means is if you don't already know who's watching, let me go looking. Of all of us, I know where to look." Slow horror spread across Chaz's face, before he realised Reyes would've been too young to be involved, at _that _point. Later, though... It would probably be bad form to show up on his former boss's doorstep just to kick his ass, on principle. Duke knew. Duke told Reyes. Nothing ever came of it, at least on paper that _Hafs _had access to. Nothing came of it that _Duke _knew about, but Chaz wasn't sure that was saying much, in this particular instance. Not when some of those clones were younger than himself.  
  
"You already asked," Reid reminded him.  
  
"No, _Falkner _asked." Chaz took a deep breath and reminded himself he should be eating. "I asked Falkner to call Reyes for me, so I wouldn't get... You'd be amazed how many years I managed to maintain a decent working relationship with him, but it's been a lot of years since he retired, and I don't think I've got it in me to be that polite, _now_. Not about _this_, anyway."  
  
"Anyway, back to things we're sure of, I know for a fact that the phone number this thing was calling changed hands every few years, even if it's out of service, now. And I don't have _all _the records, because that's too far back. Around here, digital records for accounts only go back about twenty-five years, and I need them to go back another decade. Even then, what I'm seeing is that a lot of names had that number, so whoever set this up really covered their own asses." Langly banged his fingers against the bottom of the bowl, reaching for another dumpling, and he wasn't getting up for more. "Aunt Copper's going to send more la--"  
  
Frohike leaned forward, hissing through a grimace. "You made a deal with Aunt Copper? What the hell were you--"  
  
"No, _Spastic Fantastic_ made a deal with Aunt Copper. I'm not _stupid_."  
  
"It's Auntie! You've led them right back to us!" Frohike snapped.  
  
"It's Auntie. I'm almost counting on it catching up, eventually, but Spastic should buy us enough time with them chasing their tails that we get to them, first."  
  
"We're _here_. They will come here. You're asking about the house, and they will come to the house, because how the hell else would you know about the sensor?" Frohike winged a dumpling at Langly, who caught it, but didn't eat it. "They're not going to waste time chasing a ghost, when they know where we are!"  
  
"That's pretty much what Barrabus said. And _then _I went to Auntie. It's not the goddamn Syndicate, Frohike, and everyone we know was involved has been dead for like thirty years. There's nobody left who's even going to remember what the hell this is about."  
  
"We just went through this with Overlord!"  
  
"He's right." Byers slid his half-finished bowl of dumplings onto the table, looking a bit queasy. "You're the one who said they might still be experimenting in other states. If you're right, then someone alive very definitely knows what's going on, and is still trying to hide it. And they _will_ come after us, Langly. Soon."  
  
Langly looked across the table at Frohike and Byers. "Go home. The two of you should go home. I want to finish getting the security system in, here, and I'll be right behind you. It's in what, three or four days? Just let me finish the house. Let them find it empty. It'll line up with the local gossip -- some guys from the east coast bought the old Langly place and they're fixing it up, but as a summer home, not to actually live there. Aside from Sheriff Douchebag, the one of us everybody's seen is Chaz, who looks nothing like me. I'm going to finish setting this trap, and we can trip it from home. We'll come back for the other six, later."  
  
"I'd rather not, in case we've got another Novak in the set, but..." Chaz shook his head. "It's not the worst idea. You have to tell Mary what's going on. You have to tell her not to come up here."  
  
"Hey, do you think we could take her with us?" Langly looked at Chaz, because Chaz had gotten her assigned to the case. "We could say it's so she can compare notes with Dr Alfarsi. It's totally work-related."  
  
"Italian instead of Mexican, and tell her if she hits on me, I'm taking _you _into the bathroom to loudly make you a member of the Mile High Club."  
  
"Flattered, Villette, but you're too late."  
  
Reid covered his eyes and cleared his throat.  
  
Byers squared his shoulders and changed the subject. "If you're staying until the new security system's finished, I'm staying."  
  
"Hell, I'm not flying back, alone." Frohike rolled his eyes. "Let's get this done, and hope we get out of here, before they send Bedlam to finish cleaning up this mess."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THUS END OUR ADVENTURES IN RURAL NEBRASKA, for the moment, at least, but now it's time to deal with some other loose ends! What the fuck is going on with Narcisse? How's Hafidha holding up with the house all to herself for a few weeks? What strange cases have come up while our heroes have been on something that is still not a holiday?
> 
> FIND OUT NEXT TIME!
> 
> And for those of you looking for further adventures in these fandoms, let me remind you there's a [prompt collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/ambiguously_anomalous/requests) with a pretty good fill rate, a [Pillowfort community](https://www.pillowfort.social/community/Vexation%20of%20Spirit) (if you'd like a PF invite, just ask), and a Discord server!


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